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AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




PAUL H. B. D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT. 



AMERICA AND HER 
PROBLEMS 



BY 



PAUL H. B. D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT 

MEMBER OF THE SENATE OF FRANCE AND DELEGATE 

TO THE PEACE CONFERENCES AT THE 

HAGUE, 1899 AND 1907 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1915 

All rights reserved 



IB 2 



Copyright, 1915, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1915. Reprinted 
June, 1915. 






} 



Notbioot) i^rees 

J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick «fe Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN 
EDITION 

To my Friends in the United States 

This book, the fruit of a lifetime of observation, study 
and travel in distant countries, was written during 191 1, 
191 2 and 1913 ; that is to say, almost on the eve of the war 
now being waged. It is an act of faith in American and in 
human idealism. My object was to give it living interest, 
and, for this purpose, I have devoted the first part of it 
to a faithful description of the country as I saw it, from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Mexico to Canada, in the 
infinite variety of its magnificent scenery. During the 
last ten years I have paid several visits to the United 
States, which I have learned to know very imperfectly — 
it could not be otherwise with a continent — but to the 
best of my ability. I have tried to describe, for my readers* 
benefit, the United States as I saw them, with the numer- 
ous problems — internal, external, economic, poUtical and 
moral — that confront them. I have tried to make these 
problems spring out of the ground, so to speak ; to make 
the soil tell its own story and explain its needs, its re- 
sources and the future of the inhabitants who have assumed 
the responsibiHty of developing it. I have introduced the 
greatest possible number of those who are taking part in 
this great work in a country where no one is idle, where 
every one contributes to the accomplishment of a common 



vi PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

duty, where women and children share in it, where educa- 
tion is general, not only in universities and churches but 
in clubs and countless associations constituted by an in- 
cessant stream of immigration. I have not endeavored to 
minimize the difficulties that confront the population in 
which so many nationalities and different races, often 
uncongenial, end by becoming assimilated or living side by 
side. I have expressed my admiration for the manner in 
which they struggle against inherited error, routine and 
egoism, against drink, slavery, injustice and violence in all 
its forms. 

My primary purpose is to make this an educational 
work, appealing to the ardent activity of the young and 
to the enthusiasm as well as to the good sense of pubKc 
opinion. It was written in a spirit of confidence, after an 
experience of forty years of a laborious peace, in the strong 
hope that the danger of a great European war might be 
averted by the combined effect of concerted efforts and the 
cooperation of those disinterested workers who, in count- 
less numbers, are scattered all over the world and who ask 
for nothing better than to unite and act together. To 
those skeptics who looked upon war as either a solution 
or a fatality, I have held up the greatest republic in the 
new world as an example. 

I had two objects. One was to do my best not only to 
show the United States how fully I appreciated their vast 
resources, but to make them realize the incalculable service 
they could render to civilization, as well as to themselves, 
by remaining faithful to their peace policy, which is the 
main cause of their prodigious prosperity. Secondly, after 
defining this peace policy and quoting facts to show that 
it was inspired neither by short-sightedness nor by coward- 
ice, I have tried to indicate its patriotic grandeur and its 
advantages for other nations, especially for those who 
believed in the superiority of militarism. I have given my 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION VU 

readers a choice between two forms of actual experience — 
two models, the first, to be followed, a peace poUcy, and 
the second, to be avoided, a policy of adventure and 
armament. 

Since the first edition of this book appeared in French, 
in 1913, war has broken out. Events have proved, better 
than all arguments, that this war will bring no advantage 
to the governments that premeditated and declared it. As 
I have always foreseen, it stands out in its true Hght as a 
bad action and a piece of bad business, as an indescribable 
crime and a monstrous absurdity, perhaps even a form of 
suicide. All the hatred, sorrow, mourning and irreparable 
ruin it will leave as a heritage to our children will only too 
thoroughly justify the efforts of those disinterested men who 
have tried their utmost to avert it. Had they had but 
one chance in a thousand to succeed, it was their duty to 
take that chance. 

The pubHcation of an English edition of this book in the 
United States will be timely, for it is becoming more and 
more necessary that the young states of the new world 
should avoid imitating old Europe's mistakes. The spirit of 
domination will lose more and more of its prestige, while a 
poHcy of justice and concihation will impose itself as being 
the only one corresponding to the aspirations and progress 
of humanity. We now have to decide the question that 
might serve as a conclusion to this work : the armed peace 
poHcy being condemned by facts, with what are we to re- 
place it ? How are we to organize a peace that is not fore- 
doomed to end in universal war ? 

The present war will teach neutrals a terrible lesson. 
Whether they like it or not, their interests are bound up 
with those of the belligerents who are fighting for peace 
and justice. Fortunately for themselves and for civiliza- 
tion, they can no more free themselves from this bond than 
they can escape from the more and more complex obliga- 



viii PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

tions of international intercourse. On the other hand, they 
do not want to compromise themselves. Their position is 
extremely difficult. What is their duty? Nothing could 
be a more delicate matter, for instance, than for the govern- 
ment of the United States to avoid becoming involved in 
this world conflagration and, in a word, to remain neutral. 
But how are we to understand neutrality itself? No one 
suggests that the United States should take up arms, as a 
nation, on behalf of any of the belligerents, but, on the 
other hand, no one can conceive the neutrality of the land 
of American independence as amounting to indifference. 
In showing that the duty of the American government is 
to deliver the world from the scourge of war, I do not draw 
the conclusion that it can insure the organization of peace 
by holding aloof. On the contrary, my belief is that such 
abstention, so far from keeping American influence intact, 
would amount to an abdication and would disqualify 
America. My view, at the very outset of the war, was 
that it was the duty of the United States government to 
make an indignant protest against the violation of Belgian 
neutrality and of the Hague conventions, signed by its 
representatives. Its duty and interest were to make this 
protest all the more vigorously in view of the fact that it 
remained neutral. Its persistent silence has been an im- 
mense disappointment for its friends, and, I believe, a 
great mistake ; if it will not play its part as a defender of 
treaty obligations during the war, what authority will it 
have to advise the negotiation of other treaties after the 
war? It will not be listened to. So far from making 
peace easier, the United States government will have con- 
tributed to discrediting it and making it impossible. 

Let us, however, put this burning question aside. The 
present war raises plenty of others for the consideration of 
neutrals. The first is whether national defenses should be 
in a state of preparation or non-preparation. This is an- 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION IX 

other difficult case to elucidate. How are we to escape 
both dangers : preparing too much or not enough ? I have 
felt bound to express myself unmistakably on this point, 
as well as on others, such as the abuse of governmental 
and parliamentary powers and of those in the hands of 
poUticians, business men and their newspapers; as, for 
instance, excessive protection, the yellow peril, the Indian 
and negro questions and those raised by Mexico, the 
Panama canal, the Philippines, etc. 

The problems I mentioned in 1913 as containing serious 
ground for consideration have become questions of life or 
death for the United States since the war. It is not with- 
out interest that a foreigner should have studied them 
beforehand in a spirit of profound sympathy for the new 
worlds and with the conviction that it is their destiny to 
regenerate civiHzation. 

Long before I visited the United States I had looked at 
them with a friendly eye. I began to know America, with- 
out having crossed the ocean, first by my own marriage, 
thirty years ago, and afterwards through the gentleness, 
courage and spirit of justice shown by several American 
men and women living or traveling in France, where they 
represented their country better than legions of newspapers 
could have done. Some of the friends who guided me have 
left this world. Among them I must name the refined and 
cultivated Edmond Kelly. Among others, nearly all of 
whom, I am glad to say, are still with us, are Edward 
Tuck, Nicholas Murray Butler, Du Puy, Cyrus McCormick, 
Edwin Ginn, General Porter, Henry White, Robert Bacon. 
After my first journey I made other visits to America, 
four times in all, and stayed longer and longer. Many 
Americans received me in their homes, from the White 
House down to the humblest. I have met most of their 
statesmen, their savants, their artists and their leading 
diplomatists and philanthropists, especially at the two 



X PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

Hague conferences. It was even arranged that, this year, 
I should at last accept long-postponed hospitality from my 
many friends in South America. I was to have gone to 
Brazil, the Argentine RepubKc, ChiH and Peru, returning 
by way of Panama, San Francisco (during the exposition), 
the United States and perhaps Japan. Like many other 
plans, this was upset by the war. 

I am very far from having seen everything that attracted 
me to the United States. The problems that arose during 
my journey absorbed my attention more than the journey 
itself. I even had to give up the idea of seeing such marvels 
as the Grand Canon and Yellowstone Park, not to men- 
tion many others. 

My j&rst visit to the United States dates back thirteen 
years. I went there for the Washington anniversary at 
Chicago on Feb. 22, 1902. On this occasion I delivered 
my first speech in English. It was the starting point of a 
new phase of my existence. Formerly I had talked about 
the American peril. Since then I have believed in the 
American remedy. I returned in 1907, having been invited 
by the Andrew Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh to attend 
the foundation of the powerful American International 
Conciliation Association in New York. This association 
made the arrangements for my third journey in 191 1. Up 
to this time I had traveled very little outside the Eastern 
states. My friends advised me to go farther afield and to 
see the advance guard of Americans. Long in advance 
they planned out receptions for me, both public and pri- 
vate, in the largest possible number of important centers. 
I owe them much gratitude. But for their minute care I 
should have been unable to make so complete a tour and to 
understand what might otherwise have escaped a foreigner. 
Every city, every chamber of commerce, university, club 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION XI 

and corporation undertook to put me in touch, as soon as 
I arrived, with those who could give me the information 
I required, and also to make all the arrangements for my 
lectures. The number of people whose movements were 
affected by my visit made it all the easier for me to put 
questions, to listen to what others had to say, and to see 
what there was to be seen ; and I had no difficulty in speak- 
ing several times a day to all kinds of audiences, the smallest 
of which numbered a few hundreds, though the usual size 
was several thousands. It would be very ungrateful on 
my part if I omitted to say that, to my great surprise, this 
long journey fortified me instead of tiring me out; and 
when, the year after, Gabriel Hanotaux asked me to join 
the deputation from the Comite France-Amerique and 
pay a visit to the United States for the Champlain com- 
memoration, I had no hesitation in accepting his invita- 
tion and doing my best to help him in his public-spirited 
enterprise. 

From this visit I returned with the conviction that if, 
through a combination of exceptional circumstances, my 
testimony could add another link and contribute to an 
exchange of instruction between Europe and the United 
States, I had no right to hold aloof. It seemed to me that 
my book would at least be useful as a record, like many 
other books that have preceded it, of the contemporary 
position of the United States, their strong and weak points, 
their resources and their defects, and the degree of pros- 
perity to which they have attained. It was Albert Kahn's 
very human idea to photograph the world at once, before 
it is reduced to a uniform level or transformed by progress. 
His operators are bringing back cinema films to Paris from 
Morocco, the Far East, Albania, Belgium, etc., which will 
be of great interest fifty years hence as showing what the 
world was like in 1911, 1913 or 1915. This book is an 



XU PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

attempt of the same kind — a faithful presentment of the 
present and my personal vision of the future of the United 
States. 

The translation of this book into English has been most 
carefully made in Paris, in consultation with me, by Mr. 
George A. Raper, whose scrupulous exactness and most 
faithful interpretation of my meaning I cannot praise too 
highly. The proofs of this translation have been revised, 
in New York, by a staff of most devoted voluntary helpers, 
in spite of the compHcations, which can be only too readily 
imagined, resulting from the war. I owe my personal 
thanks to my friend, President Nicholas Murray Butler, 
whose energy, as usual, triumphed over all obstacles; to 
my compatriot Mr. A. R. Ledoux, in whose veins runs the 
rich blood of French ancestors and who is an embodiment 
of the Franco- American entente cordiale; and to the Sec- 
retary of the International ConciHation Association in New 
York, Mr. F. P. Keppel, an old and tried friend and fellow- 
worker. 

The delay in publishing the American edition has en- 
abled me, not to modify my book — for that would have 
changed its character — but to make, in the form of notes 
or amplifications of the text, such additions as were neces- 
sary to bring it up to date, and also to bring forward fresh 
arguments in support of the confidence which I shall pre- 
serve, in spite of everything, to my dying day, in the future 
of humanity. 

I bequeath to my American readers and to my friends, 
known and unknown, in the new world, the inheritance of 
the beliefs which, to my sorrow, I have been unable to make 
prevalent in the governing circles of the old world, though 
these beliefs are those of all nations. They will eventually 
outweigh the preconceived opinions of statesmen. After 
this horrible war we shall have more reason than ever to 
believe in the spirit of self-sacrifice, in the benefits of pain- 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION Xlll 

ful creative effort, in the sanctified nature of the resistance 
that springs from both heart and head, and in the triumph 
of Reason, Good Will and Justice over the sterile forces of 
ignorance, pride and violence. 

P. D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT. 

Creans, 

April 2, 1915. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PART I 
THE COUNTRY 

CHAPTER I 

FROM WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE 
MEXICAN FRONTIER 

PACK 

1. On the way to Washington. Crossing the ocean. The lesson of 

the Titanic. The port. The progress and mistakes of New 
York. The demorahzing skyscraper ..... 3 

2. Philadelphia. American independence. Franco-American work. 

Newspapers, photographers and phonographs ... 8 

3. The Mexican revolution. American Machiavellis. A collective 

intervention.'' .......... 11 

4. Washington. The bureau of the American republics. An inter- 

national center. Pan-American conciliation. Baltimore. 
Exchanges of teachers and students. Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity. The French diplomacy. Good men and bad organ- 
ization. No information from France, but a daily hint from 
Paris. French taste ........ 14 

5. New Orleans. French names ; French initiative ; French souve- 

nirs ; French ingratitude. Tulane University ... 21 

6. Texas. New Orleans and Texas remind me of North Africa. 

The Texan desert and the miracles of American energy. 
The resurrection of Galveston. Austin University. San 
Antonio and the American army. El Paso reminds me of 
a Turkish garrison. The end of the Mexican administration 23 

CHAPTER II 

THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. NEITHER 
CONQUEST NOR ABSENTION 

General Porfirio Diaz's dictatorship. The danger of the situation. 
Conquest ? Mr. Hearst's publications. President Taft's 
firmness. An American party in Mexico. The cogwheel. 

XV 



XVI TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGS 



President Wilson. Madero. Huerta. A case of conscience. 
The dilemma. A moral intervention. The Hague institution 27 

CHAPTER III 
CALIFORNIA 

1. The long distances. The state of Arizona. Los Angeles. San 

Francisco 42 

2. Labor and agriculture 44 

3. Yellow immigration 47 

4. An Eldorado. Touring. The American "cote d'azur." From 

Los Angeles to Del Monte. Pasadena 50 

CHAPTER IV 
WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 

1. At the universities. Berkeley. The girls' dinner. Voluntary 

servants. Young Americans traveling in France ... 55 

2. An election campaign. For or against women. The boulevards 

of Paris. Miserable young girls. The three husbands . . 59 

3. The French woman. A French wife 63 

4. Votes for women. The suffragettes in England. The woman and 

the war. The necessary struggle. The rights of the man. 
The woman and the child forgotten. The good man is shy. 
Triumph of the women. The seaports and pleasure cities . 66 

CHAPTER V 
FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 



1. A new city. Seattle. The moving houses. The Seattle spirit 

The " single tax." Henry George. The churches 

2. The Seattle exhibition. Past and future. Far West to Far East 

From the Arctic circles to the Tropics .... 

3. Seattle's ambition. The railways. New ideals ; the French Revo 

lution. The products follow the ideas. Bad management 
deforestation; American waste. American organization 
The states of Washington and Oregon. Culture and gather 
ing of the apples. If only France knew ! . . . 

4. Portland. The Sacramento. The gold seekers. The rose city 

The automatic telephone. The Columbia River. The gold 
The progress of agriculture 

5. Dry farming. The Mormons. Illegal but existing polygamy 



75 
82 



85 



93 

98 



TABLE OF CONTENTS XVU 

CHAPTER VI 
COLORADO 

PAGE 

1. The Rocky Mountains. Colorado Springs. The canon. The 

cathedral spires. The prairie. The Indians . . . 103 

2. Boulder University. The Easter Sunday. Presided over by the 

Rocky Mountains 108 

3. Denver. My lecturing in English. Sons and Daughters of the 

Revolution. Follow the flag ! But have it in good hands. 
The lesson of the Spanish War. A cornet solo . . . 110 

4. The Chamber of Commerce, the Press, the legislature of Colo- 

rado. The governor of the state. His Honor the Mayor of 
Denver. The Press of Denver. The legislature. Lady 
members. The chief justice 115 

CHAPTER VII 

THE "INEVITABLE.? WAR" BETWEEN THE 
UNITED STATES AND JAPAN 

1. Japan premeditating war ? Let us study the danger. Soap bubble 125 

2. The worst hypotheses : A. The United States attacks Japan. 

B. Japan attacks the United States . . . . . 128 

3. The empire of the ocean ; an anachronic dream .... 133 

CHAPTER VIII 

LINCOLN — KANSAS CITY 

1. The capital of Nebraska. Life on board of the American rail- 

ways ; cabins, cooking. Lincoln or Omaha ? The work 
of militia. Voluntary discipline. The pacific and patriotic 
doctrine. William Jennings Bryan. The Hague capital of 
new ideals. American disinterestedness. France sower of 
seed. Alcoholism. Paris and pornography. Too many 
dogs and cats. Temperance 134 

2. Another new city. Kansas City. Agriculture center. Scarcity 

of labor. The 938 school teachers. The Press. French 
horses. The automobiles and the plucky girls. The park. 
The boulevards. The Missouri's failure. The floods. The 
lady who wants to know. The Knife and Fork Club . . 144 



XVlll TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IX 
ST. LOUIS — LOUISIANA 

PAGE 

1. New France. The Mississippi. I see Cavalier de la Salle pass- 

ing. The martyrdom of our pioneers. The foundation of 
St. Louis. The treaties of Utrecht and of Paris. The selling 
of Louisiana. The funeral of the flag 155 

2. The population. The climate of the United States. All kinds of 

climate. Floods and earthquakes. Peace necessary. Sou- 
venirs of France. St. Louis exhibition. French and Ameri- 
can idealism relatives but strangers ..... 164 

3. The French spirit. The French language. The country as it is. 

Mr. Robert Brookings. They do not dare speak foreign 
languages. Happy change. A French lesson. The lesson 
of The Hague 171 

4. The American devotedness. The paradise of American hospi- 

tality. Human good will. Against skepticism. St. Louis 
expansion 180 

CHAPTER X 
TWIN CITIES — MADISON— BASEBALL 

1. St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Seine and the Mississippi. 

American jokes 184 

2. The railroad crisis. Mr. James J. Hill. Outburst of prosperity. 

No terminal facilities. The panic. The water traffic. The 
ladies of St. Paul and MinneapoHs. French influence . . 188 

3. Madison. The lakes. The legislature and the university of the 

state of Wisconsin. " Our future is on the water." The 
constitution of the state of Wisconsin. Political economy. 
Social science and peace organization. Again the militia . 196 

4. Baseball. The umpire. Early risers. The international clubs. 

The " Marseillaise." Seeds of liberty 204 

CHAPTER XI 

MILWAUKEE— THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OF 
GERMAN INFLUENCE 

1. The city and the surroundings. The well-deserved success of the 
Germans. France's disasters, but no decadence. The great 
revenge. German militarism against German idealism. The 
Americans and the Alsace-Lorraine question. Tired of 



TABLE OF CONTENTS XIX 

PAGE 

" Might makes Right." German imperiahsm a threat and a 

disappointment 209 

2. The catastrophe. The balance-sheet of war. What German 

miUtarism has brought 223 

CHAPTER XII 
THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 

1. Chicago. Latest developments. The lake traffic. The drainage 

canal. The town. The American luncheon. The Panama 
Canal. American Sunday. The orchestra hall . . . 233 

2. Art, music, literature, science, philosophy 244 

3. The American barber 250 

4. The universities of Chicago and Illinois. Chicago. Urbana. 

The religion of the future. The Chinese revolution boy- 
cotted by European diplomacy 252 

5. Women and the drink question 262 

6. Cincinnati. The wealthy man who does good. The fine river. 

Toledo, Indiana, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton. Organiza- 
tion of peace and aviation. The need of this organization is 
shown by the present war 264 

7. End of the first part of my campaign 275 

PART II 
THE PROBLEMS 

CHAPTER XIII 
THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 

1. Back to Washington. A non-central Federal center. Fate of a 

world decided by one city and one man. Awakening. Out- 
burst of spring. Residential quarter. Children. Society 
women. Springtime of a nation 279 

2. Plan of the Federal city ; how it was carried out. Major L'Enfant. 

The Capitol taking the place of the Pantheon. The spirit of 
Franklin. Public spirit 285 

3. City planning. Blessings of air and sunshine. Religion of beauty. 

Walks. Children's crusades against dirt. Women again . 291 

4. Washington's park. Trees, birds ; the eagle and the bluebird . 296 

5. The art of gardening. Gardening is internationalized and democ- 

ratized. Cheap horticulture. More pleasure for less trouble 



XX TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGB 



and less cost. Bouquets of leaves. Turfed walks. Creation 

of natural taste 300 

6. Mount Vernon and the White House. The American middle 
class and the traditions of the simple life. Pilgrimage to 
Mount Vernon. A city of gratitude. Visits to the White 
House in 1902, 1907, 1911, and 1912. Mr. Roosevelt and 
Mr. Taft. My appeal to President Roosevelt in 1902. The 
Hague tribunal saved by the United States. Consequences 
of this action. Mr. Taft and arbitration treaties. Is their 
failure to be deplored ? The White House as battle field. 
Capital or court of a democracy ? The eagle or the star ? . 304 

CHAPTER XIV 

THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 

Everything for the future : Education. Nation building . . . 315 

1. Freedom of instruction : Generalization] impossible. Educational 

establishments. Margaret Morrison School. Domestic econ- 
omy. The dietitian. German teachers of French. One of 
the results of our wars. "E pluribus unum." The leaders 
of public spirit. Trustees. Lafayette College. Colum- 
bia University. Harvard. Yale. Princeton. Coeducation. 
Vassar College. Girls' Normal College in New York. Meet- 
ing of school children. The protection of youth. The Sor- 
bonne and the Boulevard St. Michel. The church as a school. 
Toleration at the universities. Freedom for educators . . 318 

2. Lake Mohonk. The Brothers Smiley. The lake cure. Debat- 

ing great ideas. Supporting great causes .... 338 

3. The education of political parties. Political classifications. Mis- 

leading names. The dissatisfied. The center between the 
two wings. Progressives and Socialists. Comparative weak- 
ness of Socialism 343 

4. The Indians. American impatience. History of colonization. 

French and English. Spaniards and Puritans. Prairie 
Caesars 351 

5. The Negroes : the inevitable day of reckoning. The slave trade. 

The war of secession. Negroes liberated but not made citi- 
zens. Mingling of races. Unassimilated population. The 
negro in a white democracy. Injustice to be confirmed or 
atoned for. Americans have faith 359 

6. Religion : is it dying out or becoming modernized ? Competition 

in well-doing. Religion of good. Christian Scientists. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS XXI 



PAGB 



Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. People who imagine themselves 
sick. Mind cures. The Scientists' newspaper. Their 
Mother Church in Boston. Union of religions. The spirit of 
the French Revolution. The Pioneer of pioneers. Sentiment 
and reason. Indifference to dogma. The Unitarians. Man's 
duties. Rival gods. Morality common to all. Back to the 
real Christian spirit. Phillips Brooks. The religion of the 
future. American women and secularization in France . 370 

7. Civic and philanthropic works : the Presbyterian Church at Se- 

attle. Pastor Matthews. Andrew Carnegie. Edwin Ginn. 
Scientific management. American museums. A model 
farm 397 

8. Children. Teaching them how to play. Their need for life, 

space, cheerfulness, light. Nature and especially quiet. Play- 
ground associations. Tadpoles. Imitation war. Bonfires. 
Excursions. John Brashear. Doing the honors of the sky. 
Libraries. John Bigelow. The pageant. The light of truth. 
The Christian command 407 



CHAPTER XV 
COMPETITION 

Pittsburgh. Production. The circulation of things, men and 
ideas. Fort Duquesne. . Fort Pitt. Pittsburgh. Gas, coal and 
wheat one above the other. Blast furnaces. The apotheosis 
of initiative. Conveyance by land and water . . . 418 

Americans versus Americans. Pittsburgh's competitors. Chicago. 
Railroads and canals. The Erie Canal. Duluth. Roads. 
La Salle Creek. Disciplining Niagara. Education by gentle- 
ness. Collective labor. Another moving house. Unloading 
ore automatically at Buffalo 426 

Competition from Canada. The two banks of the Niagara. Re- 
venge after prolonged disdain. A clear field. Four months 
of hot weather. The population of Canada. Agriculture. 
Motoculture. Pere Monnier. Three transcontinental rail- 
roads. Navigation on rivers, canals and lakes. Hudson 
Bay. Our slowness. The port of Brest. The armed peace 
system. A century of peace between England and America. 
Contagious dreadnought fever . . .... 444 

Universal competition. The West Indies. South America. The 
African continent. From the Nile to the Zambesi. From 



Xxii • TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGB 



Morocco to the Cape. Asia. Turkey. American ignorance 
of Russia. A Canada in Europe and Asia. Competition 
from old countries. Great and small powers. Scandinavia. 
Americans between two fires 467 

CHAPTER XVI 
AMERICA'S DUTY 

1. Pensions. The army and navy : 440 million dollars spent in 

pensions. The professional army. The militia. The navy. 
The United States protected by two oceans. A race to ruin. 
" Ships that are too big." Progress in submarines, mines and 
torpedoes. Expenditure. Dissatisfaction. Ports for all. 
The true American navy. The Naval School at Annapo- 
lis. The danger of an American navy and the policy of 
intervention. The lessons of the great war of 1914-1915 . 479 

2. The colonies. Imperialism and its vicious circle. The Pacific 

Ocean an American lake or the Pacific islands neutralized .'' 
The Philippines. Machinery wanted ..... 497 

3. Panama. The Panama Canal repudiated by the French republic. 

Charles de Lesseps in prison. Resurrection. The forth- 
coming opening. A tribute to President Roosevelt and 
American energy. Fortifications. Enfeeblement through 
militarism. Possession or destruction of the canal. Prefer- 
ential tolls. Treaty violation. Arbitration suggested and 
rejected. The actual war : neutrality not indifference , . 501 

4. Customs tariffs. Pessimism : Putting tariffs into operation worse 

than tariffs themselves. Inadequate justice. Administrative 
habits contrary to national idealism. Parliamentary control 
a farce. Elected representatives as slaves. Pork-barrel leg- 
islation. Organization of the Grand Army of the Republic. 
" Patriotic " military and naval leagues. Electoral reform. 
Newspapers. Customs of legislation. Public spirit will reform 
the administration. Reply to pessimists. New currents of 
foreign immigration in the United States .... 513 

5. Conclusion : Distance between the United States and their gov- 

ernment. Americans faithful to the Mount Vernon traditions, 
but the government has moved away from them. Birth of 
imperialism. The 1912 election. The rights of man and the 
right of peoples. The renovation of Europe. Interest and 
duty of the United States 518 

Appendix : My New Year's letter 525 



PART I 
THE COUNTRY 



AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 



CHAPTER I 

FROM WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 

I. On the Way to Washington: crossing the Ocean. The 
lesson of the Titanic. The port, progress and mistakes of New 
York. The demoralizing skyscraper. — 2. Philadelphia. Amer- 
ican independence. Franco-American work. Newspapers, photog- 
raphers and phonographs. — 3. The Mexican Revolution. 
American Macchiavellis. A collective intervention ? — 4. Wash- 
ington. The Bureau of the American Republics. An international 
center. Pan-American conciliation. Baltimore. Exchanges of 
teachers and students. Johns Hopkins University. The French 
Diplomacy. Good men and bad organization. No information 
from France, but a daily hint from Paris. French taste. — 5. New 
Orleans. French names; French initiative, French souvenirs; 
French ingratitude. Tulane University. — 6. Texas. New Or- 
leans and Texas remind me of North Africa. The Texan desert 
and the miracles of American energy. The resurrection of Galves- 
ton. Austin University. San Antonio and the American army. 
El Paso reminds me of a Turkish garrison. The end of the Mexican 
administration. 

I. Policing the Ocean 

I HAVE nearly always made the crossing from France to 
New York at the worst time of the year, either in February 
or in the spring, but this has in no way prevented me from 
looking back on the journey with pleasure as an air-cure and 
a period of perfect rest. It has been borne in upon me, how- 
ever, that the faster our modern liners steam, the less safe is 
the route on which they travel, especially for the unfortu- 

3 



4 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

nate vessels they sink, sometimes without even knowing it. 
The route ought to be watched and, in any case, made 
more southerly eight months out of the twelve. There are 
several international organizations that are needed in these 
days of enormously increased means of communication ; and 
among them is the poHcing of the ocean. The Titanic dis- 
aster ought never to have taken place, and the same may 
be said of a great many others, some less sensational and 
some of which we know nothing at all. In the matter of reg- 
ulating ocean traffic, everything still remains to be done, or 
to be done over again. Let us hope that the recent interna- 
tional agreement of London will have good, practical results.^ 

New York Harbor too Narrow 

Practically all harbors are proving inadequate. This 
applies to Havre, in spite of all that has been done to im- 
prove it. Brest does not count except as a naval port. 
Magnificent and impressive as it is, the entrance to New 
York harbor has nevertheless proved too narrow for the 
enormous vessels now in use, which the slightest mistake 
transforms into catapults that carry destruction to them- 
selves and everything within reach. 

1 As a result of the Titanic disaster, an international conference was 
held in London during the month of November, 191 3. This conference 
elaborated and adopted on January 20, 1914, a convention duly signed by 
the representatives of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, 
Spain, the United States of America, France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, 
The Netherlands, Russia and Sweden, "to safeguard human life at sea." 

The convention sought especially to minimize the danger from wrecks 
and derelicts by their destruction, to promote researches concerning floating 
ice, improvement in design and arrangement of water-tight bulkheads, 
radio-telegraphy, life-saving apparatus and its operation, measures against 
fire, etc., etc. Unfortunately, this convention was not ratified, the war 
having intervened to arrest all progress and to turn civilization backward. 

The disaster to the Titanic was only an accident of small importance 
compared to the catastrophes deliberately planned through mines, artillery, 
torpedoes and submarines. (March, 1915.) 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 5 

Progress has become so daring and so upsetting to pre- 
conceived ideas that, to keep pace with it, the world has 
to be continually changing its methods and machinery. 
There is ruinous and exhausting competition on all sides. 
The necessity of making these incessant changes ages even 
young countries in a few years. The ports, and also the 
factories, that are in the best position nowadays are those 
in which everything has still to be done. Having no past, 
they can begin with the latest improvements, to which the 
others are just coming or for which they are planning. 

Old Cities in America 

It is the same with cities, and especially American cities. 
The oldest, dating back a century or two — three at the 
outside — are badly off nowadays in comparison with the 
new cities springing up on all sides. The former lack the 
charm and the prestige that history has bestowed on an- 
cient towns, whose ruins are worth more than modern 
dwellings, and they are hampered by roughly built struc- 
tures that make all beautifying and progress difficult. 
Half their time and resources are taken up in more or less 
makeshift attempts to correct the mistakes of a by no 
means distant past. The life of New York is a constant 
succession of great achievements. A fine sight, and one 
that well befits our times, is this effort on the part of a 
city, which began badly, and may be said to have been 
badly brought up, having reached maturity and become 
conscious of its position strives to fill it worthily. 

Badly Planned New York 

The plan of New York was conceived, or improvised, in 
opposition to modern ideas. These in reality are a rever- 
sion to true architectural traditions, in which a garden or 



6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

landscape served as an harmonious and health-giving sur- 
rounding for the habitation. New York can boast neither 
a tree nor a single charm of Nature. It consists of cement 
cubes and caissons built as high as possible, placed side by 
side and separated only by long nameless streets crossing 
one another at right angles. What chance does such a plan 
leave to the imagination ? It is something to see the Amer- 
icans in this their darling city, proud of the difficulties it 
has overcome, plethoric with wealth, more thickly peopled 
than some European kingdoms (it has just twice as many 
inhabitants as Norway) and already compelled by its own 
success to begin all over again ! 

Every one is trying to contribute to the beautifying of 
New York, but it is nothing less than a labor of Hercules. 
By going a long way off, it will be easy enough to provide 
New York with parks (we must admire the city for having 
preserved Central Park), open spaces, promenades and 
playgrounds; but what can be done for the vast extent 
of old New York? Merely modernizing a single railroad 
depot, not even in a central district, means compulsory 
purchases of property, expedients, temporary works that 
threaten to last forever, combinations of interests, and 
graft — the usual experience, in fact, of all large capitals. 
What would it be if an attempt were made to change the 
whole plan ? It would be an impossibihty ; and yet every- 
thing possible is being done — immense achievements, 
doomed to be inadequate ! All this is well known. Plenty 
of foreign travelers have given us excellent descriptions of 
New York. Only a few of them have made the mistake 
of taking New York for the whole of America. I will 
therefore refrain from remarking upon its magnificent new 
docks, its colossal Pennsylvania and Grand Central stations, 
its depressing but speedy subway, and its gigantic tube 
under the Hudson, which used to be so pleasant to cross 
by ferryboat. 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 7 

I will abstain from deploring the continued and excessive 
increase in the height of its skyscrapers, and yet I must 
say something on this subject, if only to satisfy my con- 
science by expressing a hope that the skyscraper fashion 
will not spread to the old world just as the new seems to 
be beginning to tire of it. 

Demoralizing Effect of the Skyscraper 

Now that it has forty or forty-five stories, the skyscraper 
is becoming aggressive and demoralizing. I admit that, 
both for those who build it and those who dive in it, it pos- 
sesses all kinds of very practical advantages, owing to the 
way in which everything is centralized, simplified and per- 
fected to the highest possible point, but the cost of these 
individual advantages to the community is too great. The 
day will come when extremes will meet and the skyscraper 
will be banned hke the hovel. Perhaps nothing better will 
be invented, for those who like to Hve well above the crowd 
and its noise and dust, but it is a form of oppression directed 
against the population of the entire city. At the base of a 
skyscraper, a wide street becomes a mere alley, a ditch, or 
a well. Man counts for less ; the poor are still poorer, and 
drop out of sight. On the ground, which has become a 
great luxury, the skyscraper monopolizes the only benefits 
that belonged to all — light, air and the blue sky. It 
lengthens night and throws its icy shadow in daytime over 
whole districts, thousands of human beings eager to five, 
and children. It will not even let trees live ! Hitherto 
the size of houses and public monuments has been more or 
less regulated by trees. These are now dwarfed into mere 
mushrooms by the skyscraper. It is a monument of ego- 
tism, ostentation and self-advertisement. It is enormous 
and inhuman. Apart from trees, how can we imagine, near 
this dominating mass, any one of those works of art that 



8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

are more numerous than one would suppose in the United 
States and are being built even in New York, in the wealth- 
iest districts ? How are we to conceive the existence of any 
monument of piety, love or taste ; any library, museum, 
temple, church, club or theater, under such conditions? 
And still less can we imagine a mere garden. 

The Americans realize their youthful errors as well as 
ourselves, and perhaps better, but it does not always rest 
with them to make up for these errors. Megalomania 
carries its own chastisement with it, and leaves traces that 
serve for the instruction of posterity. For these reasons 
and many others the great and magnificent modern city of 
New York is viewed by many of the young communities 
in the United States, as we shall see, in the Hght of an 
out-of-date creation. It is the same with Philadelphia. 

2. Philadelphia 

I duly made the pilgrimage to Philadelphia, the birth- 
place of American independence. I found that the city 
council and the business men who received me at the city 
club were more than ever busied in preparing for the future 
requirements of their city. A great amount of attention is 
devoted to education and the care of the rising generation. 
Even young trees are included, and people are sorry that 
the ax was used so freely in former years. A census of such 
trees as are left has been ordered. Others are being planted, 
and a ''shade committee" has been formed. This is going 
back to the mistakes as well as to the pleasant remembrances 
of the past. Americans are constantly on the lookout 
for facts and examples that will help them, and are finding 
them afar off or close at hand or away back in history. 

In a pious and patriotic spirit they are keeping the 
memory of our French forefathers alive. France would 
be guilty of criminal folly if, through ignorance, she allowed 



n 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 9 

such bonds between the two sister republics to snap or even 
to slacken. I have been shown the statue of a French 
benefactor to Philadelphia, Etienne Girard, a precursor of 
France's free and generous ideas. Statues of Lafayette 
are to be found all over the country. His biography has 
been written by a former American ambassador in BerHn, 
Mr. Charlemagne Tower, who is now Hving in active re- 
tirement in Philadelphia, and the book has become a classic. 

Franco- American Work 

Americans are grateful, and they are proving it. They 
love France, simply and disinterestedly, for the part she 
took in creating and Kberating the United States, and for 
her attachment to the principles of justice which are the 
raison d'etre of a free people. They are disturbed in mind 
by all the ill we speak about ourselves, by the continual 
attacks of our newspapers on responsible authority, and by 
our national mania for making things out worse than they 
are ; and they are glad to be reassured and have it demon- 
strated to them that, after all, the French Revolution 
brought forth some fruit that was not entirely bad and that 
France is still the same France as of yore. They realize 
that, in reahty, France's enemies are theirs also, that the 
attacks on her are directed against her form of government 
and, consequently, against theirs, more than against herself. 
They ask for nothing better than to see that she is pro- 
gressing in the world's confidence and in peaceful prosperity. 
That prosperity and wealth are not the result of mere 
chance. The cHmate and soil have much to do with it, 
but what they admire and want to hear about is her love 
for labor, her obstinate devotion to great ideals and her 
beHef in better things, for, like ourselves and in a still 
greater degree, they need labor, progress and continuity 
to carry on their national organization. 



10 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

This, and nothing more, is the theme I have come to 
uphold. I rejoice with them over all the good accomplished 
by their ancestors and ours, but I add: ^^ Noblesse oblige! 
They created your country and won your freedom. It is 
now our duty to turn our inheritance to good account and 
hand it down to those who come after us. Governments, 
even with the best intentions, are at the mercy of mistaken 
pubHc opinion. Let us therefore instruct that opinion, 
and begin by instructing ourselves. Let us draw closer to- 
gether and know one another. This is a Franco-American 
movement which will be not merely idealistic but positive, 
practical and urgent, and it will complete what was done by 
our predecessors." 

All this is perfectly well understood ; and when I have 
'' covered," as they say here, the territory of the United 
States I shall not have wasted my time. I have been both 
helped and hampered by the press : by which I mean that 
I had to lecture several times a day to journalists who, as 
a rule, summarized my remarks correctly. Some people 
complain of newspaper men, instead of blaming themselves 
for giving poor expression to what they expect others to 
reproduce well. There are also the reporters, who are not 
always journaHsts : the kind who board your steamer at 
New York in a hurry, with a notebook in one hand and a 
kodak in the other. The photographer is also an excellent 
auxiliary (not to mention the phonograph man, who wants 
you to deHver your speech to him). The photographer 
attacks you at your hotel, invades your room at the head of 
his squad of operators, and does not let you go until he 
has taken innumerable pictures with extraordinary speed. 
Next morning, or the same evening, you see yourself in the 
paper at the top of a report of your speech. It is a very con- 
venient and up-to-date way of letting your family know 
what you are doing. 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER II 

3. The Mexican Revolution 

At the beginning of my last journey but one, the pessi- 
mists (in March, 1911) were much exercised by the revolu- 
tion in Mexico. They assured me that war would follow 
at once and that the best thing I could do was to return 
home. I dechned to hsten to these exaggerations and I 
went on my way. The situation must be regarded in its 
true light. We have to consider not only a revolution, 
carried even to devastation and anarchy, in Mexico, but 
also the real interest of the United States and their means 
of action. 

The situation was very complicated in 1911 ; I found it 
the same in 191 2 and it is much more so at present. The 
United States government cannot deal with it as it would 
Hke to do ; and, what is more serious, it cannot act abso- 
lutely as it pleases in all the states, and especially in Texas, 
which is much larger than France (688,340 square kilo- 
meters), not to mention the five other states taken away, 
like Texas, from Mexico — an invariably dangerous prece- 
dent. The United States government has to guard an 
enormously long frontier (about 2000 kilometers), bristling 
with wild, inaccessible mountain peaks ; and it will have 
some difficulty in reconciling its police duties, and that of 
temporary intervention, in case of serious trouble across the 
border, without coming into conflict with its duties and in- 
terests as a neutral. It will have to be especially careful 
to hold out against the usual demands of its citizens, es- 
tablished or not in Mexico, who claim its protection and 
then proceed to clamor blindly for a protectorate and finally 
annexation. In addition to all these difficulties, there will 
be claims for damages, not to mention the danger of de- 
stroying the equihbrium of the United States by extending 
them too far southward and Spanifying them as far as 
Panama. But this is only one side of the question. 



12 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

What can the United States do and what do they want 
to do ? That is the point. They have assembled an army, 
the papers say, but what sort of an army? An immense 
country, in process of formation, cannot muster an army so 
quickly. It has neither the time nor the money, and it can 
hardly supply the men, even by paying them heavily and 
sacrificing crops which already have to suffer considerably 
through the scarcity of labor. One can travel from Chicago 
to New Orleans without seeing a single soldier. 

American Macchiavellis 

It has been suggested by some American Macchiavellis 
that bodies of irregulars — Mexicans, half breeds, Indians, 
etc. — should be raised and paid to fight Mexico. This 
would be a deplorable old-time expedient. It would de- 
moralize all concerned and end by making Mexico resist 
still more desperately, and by exciting mistrust, not to say 
hostility, throughout South America and in Canada. A 
few American regiments, dispatched to or raised in Texas, 
and acting in cooperation with some cruisers protecting 
the ports, should therefore be sufficient to enable the gov- 
ernment to carry out indispensable police operations, but, 
except through some attack of madness which nothing 
entitles us to anticipate, it will go no further.^ It will not go 
beyond intervention in the most restricted and temporary 
form possible, well knowing, as it does, that it would be 
powerless to stop, and more especially that not one of the 
forty-nine states in the Union, including the former Span- 

^ The result has proved this to be correct. The Government of the 
United States has not even attempted to intervene — or at least only tem- 
porarily and with the desire to terminate the intervention without delay. 
It has given proof, in accord with almost universal American opinion, of a 
generous spirit of concihation; it appealed to the mediation of the three 
principal South American repubhcs — the "A. B. C.'s." All these facts 
are not as generally known as they would be had not the European war 
imposed such great responsibihties upon the United States. (March, 191 5.) 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 13 

ish provinces and the state of Texas itself, wants either 
war or adventurous policies that lead to it. 

A Collective Intervention 

It may be, I repeat, that the United States will be obliged 
to decide on a minimum of intervention, but even that 
minimum should not and cannot last. It is quite the reverse 
of being to the interest of the United States. I regret that 
it has not been thought possible to prepare for a collective 
cooperation of all the great Powers, American as well as 
European and Asiatic,^ in order to secure neutral and clearly 
disinterested intervention, in case of urgent need. This 
intervention would not be in contradiction to the Monroe 
Doctrine; far from it. It would not constitute intrusion on 
the part of one or of several foreign Powers. It would be 
joint action by all civilized nations for the sake of civiHza- 
tion, in answer to an invitation from the United States. 
This collective intervention would be the safest and most 
honorable way of putting an end to anarchy or at least of 
diminishing it. It would locaKze the outbreak and encour- 
age the good elements in the Mexican population to main- 
tain order and attend to business. They would not regard 
it as a danger or an offense, but as a mark of friendHness. It 
would arouse no suspicion and not even offend any suscep- 
tibihty. It would be acceptable both morally and politi- 
cally. In taking such an initiative, the United States 
would do honor to themselves, because it would show them 
to be faithful to their principles and opposed to new con- 
quests and adventures, and would give a great and striking 
example of uprightness when the world most needs it. 

1 Let it be remembered once for all what has been said in the introduction 
to this volume. It was completed and published in French long before the 
present European war. The reader will quite understand that the writer 
was not willing to modify in 191 5 his pubhshed impressions of 19 13. So 
to do would have changed the very spirit of the book, (March, 191 5.) 



14 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

A Mexican War and Its Dangers 

The effect of a Mexican war on the United States would 
be to stop their growth. It would only serve the interests 
of the Httle army of Imperialists, Megalomaniacs and 
speculators, who are much more dangerous to their country 
than is the revolution in Mexico. It should not be for- 
gotten that conquerors have no luck with Mexico. The 
United States had better avoid a mistake that was fatal 
to Napoleon I himself. In his omnipotence he looked 
down upon his weak neighbor Spain, but this weakness 
was too much for his armies and his generals. The Spanish 
guerrillas had the better of the Napoleonic Grand Army, 
and the Spanish war was the beginning of the end for the 
conqueror of conquerors and for his empire. Even Bis- 
marck, soon after his great triumph, had to give way to 
Spain when she rose in defense of the Caroline islands. He 
yielded to a country which, though weak, was strong in the 
consciousness of its right. Beware of Mexico ; it is four 
times as large as Spain, more deserted, more difficult of 
access, and more deadly ! It is emphatically a hornets* 
nest. I will revert to this question because it is more than 
complex ; it is tragic. It is not merely American or Pan- 
American, but universal and, I fear, eternal. It is a severe 
test for the youthful United States of America. 

4. At Washington. The Pan-American Bureau 

Washington society and the diplomatic corps were in- 
vited by the Bureau of American Republics to attend my 
lecture in the fine building it owes to the munificence 
of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. This Pan-American Bureau 
works admirably. It has no pretension toward unifying 
the twenty-one republics of the New World, which would 
be absurd and impossible. It contents itself with doing 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 1 5 

its best to unite them as much as possible. It does not 
pretend to abolish causes of dissension or prevent diffi- 
culties, which are the inevitable lot of every association, 
but it places at the common disposal everything that can 
bring them together and serve their interests. In fact, it 
is paving the way, as a practical application of the Monroe 
Doctrine, for a positive and defensive alliance of all the 
repubhcs on the American continent, — a society for mu- 
tual assistance as well as initiative and economic activity, 
an insurance against American misunderstandings, quarrels 
and wars : in other words, American peace and progress. 
Its expenses are paid by contributions from all the American 
states, in proportion to their population. The pivot and 
soul of the organization is its director-general, Mr. John 
Barrett. He is elected by the committee and officers, to 
whom he is responsible. 

The Bureau itself is made up of the United States Secre- 
tary of State and all the representatives of American gov- 
ernments at Washington. The organization also comprises 
an international staff of statisticians, commercial attaches, 
editors, librarians, translators, clerks and stenographers. 
Correspondence is actively carried on with business men in 
all countries of the Union and beyond. A very handsome 
illustrated monthly review is published in four languages — 
English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Some day, 
perhaps, numbers in German and Russian will be added. 
The library, which consists of books on special subjects, 
issues reports, tabulated statements, illustrative diagrams 
and maps. The public is admitted to the library as well 
as to the rest of the building. The interior has been so 
designed — by a French architect, Paul Cret, a follower 
of Pascal — that the lofty classical portal enhances the 
charm of the patio inside, where Latin-Americans find a 
homelike hothouse atmosphere, with tropical vegetation 
all around them. In summer the roof, which is movable, 



1 6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

is taken off, and the patio, like those in the South, is in the 
open air. It is symbohcal of Spanish America. 

All the American governments support the Bureau, 
which is constantly calHng attention to the resources of the 
various states in the Union. It is a sort of collective 
development syndicate — something like a committee 
formed to make America known and to bring its various 
parts into communication. 

An International Center 

I do not see why we should not have a bureau of this kind 
in Europe. By keeping in touch with the American Bureau, 
it would render great service to trade and producers in 
every country and, consequently, to all. This would be, 
as it is here, the beginning of an organization indispensable 
as a complement to the new rapprochements of our time. 
Some influential body — the Comite France- Amerique, for 
instance — ought to take the initiative in realizing this 
idea. We would then see, on both sides of the Atlantic, 
the Pan-American Bureau at Washington and the Pan- 
European Bureau in Paris — two twin bureaus for one and 
the same national and universal action. This is not so far 
off as it seems. Some architects of great merit, Mr. Hen- 
drik C. Andersen, an American, and M. Ernest M. Hebrard, 
a Frenchman, with an elite of collaborators, have already 
drawn up a very fine plan of the new city, the "international 
artistic, economic and scientific world-center," where the 
representatives of these two bureaus could meet the dele- 
gates of all the foreign administrations, who want, not 
to become one, of course, but, on the contrary, to know 
one another and to afi&rm their national existence. The 
most highly respected men, beginning with M. Emile 
Boutroux of the French Academy, M. Liard, the Rector of 
the Sorbonne, and many others have accorded their patron- 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 1 7 

age to this vast enterprise, the realization of which would 
not cost very much if the expense were divided among forty- 
seven Powers and spread over ten or twenty years.^ 

Pan-American Conciliation 

Another sign of the times is that the Washington Bureau 
has already made its influence felt in the United States and 
South America. Its aims are so well understood that a 
subsidiary and additional organization has just been founded 
in New York with the powerful assistance of Messrs. EKhu 
Root, Nicholas Murray Butler, Robert Bacon, James Brown 
Scott and others. It is called the Pan-American ConciHa- 
tion Institute and is a new offshoot of the already mentioned 
International ConciKation Society. This institute's mission 
is preeminently educational. In all the American countries 
in which it is represented, it will arrange for exchange visits 
of teachers and students, for pubHcations and assistance in 
various forms, in the spirit that will most surely prepare 
pubhc opinion to aid the work of the Pan-American Bureau. 

Baltimore. — Exchanges of Teachers and Students 

These exchanges of ideas, knowledge and men are in the 
air and are being discussed everywhere. A question put 
to me at Baltimore, where the celebrated Johns Hopkins 
University is situated, was: ''Why does not the French 
Government help to send some of its young graduate 
teachers to our great universities? It would be doubly 
beneficial both for them and for us." 

I fully approved of this suggestion, while not forgetting 
that a similar experiment, which has already proved very 
interesting, is being carried on, thanks to some generous 

^ France-Amerique Revue, December, 191 3; a lecture delivered by Paul 
Adam in the great hall of the Sorbonne, Dec. 6, 1913. 
c 



1 8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

innovators. There is, for instance, the Albert Kahn foun- 
dation. When, however, the holders of these traveHng 
scholarships return to France, the Ministry of Pubhc 
Instruction usually treats them as if they had been away 
on a vacation instead of at work. They are sent off to 
some obscure provincial college and left to vegetate there. 
As a rule, any one in the employ of a French government 
department who distinguishes himself by a spirit of initiative 
is more likely to be punished than rewarded. Any officer 
or teacher who undertakes a mission outside the regular 
routine sacrifices his prospects. ''The absent are always 
to blame" is a peculiarly French proverb. It is particu- 
larly appHcable to our representatives abroad. 

French Diplomacy 

For the past fifteen years — to go no further back — we 
have been lucky enough to be well and very ably repre- 
sented at Washington. In this period we have had only 
two ambassadors — in itself a good sign : two men as 
different from each other as any two Frenchmen could 
well be. One, M. Jules Cambon, does not speak EngHsh, 
while the other, M. Jusserand, knows it thoroughly. 

When I met M. Jules Cambon here in 1902, I admired 
the manner in which he added to our influence by his expe- 
rience and the all-pervading charm of his intelHgence and 
conversation. I even thought his ignorance of Enghsh was 
a great advantage, as it obHged the Americans to bring 
out their French, about which they were more often shy 
than ignorant. M. Cambon's personal efforts in the United 
States have done an immense amount to awaken, or revive, 
pride in the Franco- American cooperation of olden times. 
The Lafayette and Rochambeau monuments, which 
occupy the most prominent corner positions opposite the 
White House, on the main square of what has become a 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 1 9 

magnificent city, are an impressive sight. They are pre- 
eminently national monuments. 

The fact remains, however, that in a country with a 
future, and in a land of education such as this, people 
are not satisfied with merely seeing things; they want 
to know, and so M. Jusserand, when he unveils a statue, 
tells his audience about it. He explains what France 
was and what she is. He is an ambassador who does 
not confine himself to negotiating. He also discharges the 
duties of a pubHc educator, and this is what a young 
people, such as that of the United States, appreciates 
most of all. 

In reckoning up the excellent work accomplished by these 
two representatives of France, I rejoiced at their selection, 
and I hoped such choices would become the rule. There is 
no lack of the right kind of men, but the trouble is in the 
way in which selections are made at the Quai d'Orsay. 
Influences of all kinds are brought to bear, with a complete 
disregard for the intellectual, social and moral standing of 
our representatives, and, I might say, their family life. 
There is certainly no need for an ambassador of the Republic 
to set an example of display, but it is essential that he should 
be a man of personal worth, with a respectable and respected 
home circle. If this is true as applied to our ambassadors, 
it is none the less so in regard to our consuls. After having 
passed a stiff examination, these unlucky men are sent off, 
anyhow, to posts and climates which are often quite un- 
suited to them. Consuls who know English are frequently 
sent to Spanish-speaking countries, to Germany and 
Russia, and so on. To my knowledge this has always 
been the practice. The permanent officials give way to the 
minister, who in turn gives way to pressure from Parlia- 
ment or elsewhere. This state of things will continue so 
long as public opinion remains ignorant or indifferent and 
declines to interfere. 



20 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

If we look back to the way in which France was formerly 
represented, in the Chevalier d'Eon's day, for instance, 
we shall find that our diplomatists have no reason to com- 
plain of their position as compared with that of their prede- 
cessors under the old regime. But it is a great pity to see 
France take so Kttle interest in the manner in which she is 
represented abroad, especially as the development of means 
of communication has enormously extended our relations 
with other countries. 

No Information from France. Paris Fashions 

The mistake is all the greater in view of the fact that 
there is no organized service of telegraphic news from 
France. The American papers publish news from every 
country in the world except ours. France is scarcely 
mentioned except when some scandal crops up, and even 
then the news is taken from EngHsh or German agencies. 

Nevertheless, truth will out, and vital forces must assert 
themselves in spite of all obstacles. The monuments of 
our great men, the masterpieces of our artists, scientists, 
aviators, professors and novelists, our new plays, our 
actors and our fashions make up for newspaper silence. 
To mention only our fashions, the speed with which they 
cross the ocean is remarkable. 

The same newspapers that pay no attention to our 
pohtical debates are full of what is inspired by our Rue de la 
Paix. Regularly every day they give prominence to an 
echo of our fashions : a Parisian idea with an elegant illus- 
tration, a ''Daily Hint from Paris." I have been out of 
reach of our boulevards for only a few weeks, and here I 
find the big hat conflict going on just as it does with us, 
and I see pretty faces hidden under parasols of flowers and 
feathers or crowned by a little helmet or a flower-pot about 
the size of one's fist. All these things bear the stamp of 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 21 

Paris and France. It is a monopoly. Good or bad, it is 
French taste, and this is the only kind wanted. 

5. New Orleans. French Initiative and French Ingratitude 

From intense cold I have changed into a tropical tem- 
perature. It was a great surprise to see fresh vegetation 
and blue sky when I awoke, and another surprise was the 
cordial greeting I received from people of dear old France, 
such as MM. A. Fortier, Roaldes and Chassaignac, who 
were waiting for me at the station. It was also painful 
to have to note, once more, what a magnificent piece 
of work was accomplished by French initiative and re- 
pudiated by France. Reminders of La Salle, Champlain, 
Marquette and many others meet one on all sides. Such 
names as Orleans, Pontchartrain, Chantilly and Paul 
Tulane constantly catch the eye, like those of Lafayette 
and Rochambeau at Washington. 

French initiative came here and put life into this im- 
mense new continent, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. 
It took possession of the magnificent Mississippi valley, 
scattered along which are French names, such as Saint 
Paul, Saint Louis and even the Kttle village of Chef Men- 
teur. Of course, such an empire could not have been re- 
tained in a political sense, but how utterly it was aban- 
doned by an indifferent government and misunderstood 
by public opinion ! 

Frenchmen seem to be fated to have no support from their 
own country when they devote themselves to the noblest, 
most thankless and most useful causes. This is perhaps 
owing to the operation of some law of Nature which is 
opposed to intrusting too much to a single agency and 
limits our share of active participation, as in the case of 
the inventor. To some is given the joy of opening up the 
path, and to others the satisfaction of reaching the goal. 



22 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

It is also a question of temperament. True inventors are 
like cooks who do not eat the food they have themselves 
prepared, and like genuine artists who paint for the sake 
of art and not to sell their pictures. 

Our old famihes of French planters have also suffered 
severely through their abandonment by France, but they 
show no sign of it and have remained true to her in spite 
of everything. It has been a great delight to me here to 
come across so many of our provincial turns of speech and 
familiar names. Paul Tulane, the founder of the great 
university in which I was a guest, and of which my friend 
Dr. Craighead was president, is a very common name in 
our old Maine. 

Since the abolition of slavery, the Southern states of the 
Union have suffered more than the rest from the great 
weakness of the United States — the scarcity of labor. 
In Georgia one travels through plantations of fruit trees 
— peaches, plums and almonds — extending as far as the 
eye can see, and, farther south, are the cotton, rice, tobacco 
and sugar estates, but every year there is the same diffi- 
culty about getting in the crops. It becomes more than 
ever a wonder to me where the government, which is look- 
ing all over the world for colonists and workmen, can 
find sailors and soldiers. 

Tulane University 

I was greatly surprised and impressed by the great annual 
festival at Tulane University. When I entered the hall in 
my new dignity as a doctor of the university, the orchestra 
greeted me with a series of old French folk songs and 
patriotic songs, from the ''Chant du Depart" to ''J'ai du 
bon tabac dans ma tabatiere," ''C'est le Roi Dagobert" 
and "J'aime bien les bons gateaux et les confitures" and 
ended with a most spirited ''Marseillaise." The students 
emphasized these songs with Indian war whoops. The 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 23 

girls, who looked charming in their black or mauve gowns, 
with caps to match, waved their banners gayly and ap- 
plauded frantically. Every one wanted to do honor to 
France, ''la belle France," as she is called everywhere, 
except among ourselves. 

6. Texas. Northern Africa 

Since I arrived in Louisiana, and more especially Texas, 
I have been haunted by the remembrance of northern 
Africa. I do not mean that this country has anything 
resembling the Mediterranean coast landscapes, which 
in my opinion are unequaled. New Orleans reminded 
me very little of what the European part of Tunis, *'la 
marine," was in my youth, with its level ground reclaimed 
from the lake, its houses and even its tombs washed by 
the waters, its mountains and its flies. Most of these 
things are missing here, but we have something that Tunis 
does not possess — the Mississippi, which is quite capable 
of bringing the whole country not only wealth but floods ; 
the luxuriant, chaotic vegetation flourishing wherever 
the virgin forest has not made way for immense rectangular 
plantations; the roads which remind me of our native 
tracks, dotted with Hght vehicles driven in Tunis by Sici- 
lians, Arabs and Maltese, and here by Spaniards, Ameri- 
cans, negroes and negresses. This is not America as 
Chateaubriand described it, but colonization, with its 
mixture of races and its contrasts, and also its problems. 

A Miracle 

Texas is a country of great estates and ranches over 
which scanty herds and a few cowboys are scattered. 
Throughout endless tracts of territory there is no water to 
be had. I saw some tropical showers, but I was assured 



24 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

that, up to that time, there had not been a drop of rain 
for fourteen months. 

This is the kind of desert that human energy is begin- 
ning to fertihze. From time to time the train stopped at 
a station surrounded, by wooden buildings, many of which 
were pretty ; and I could see windmills at work over re- 
cently bored wells. Then came the desert again, bounded 
by the Apache mountains. 

Houston and San Antonio are feeders for the flourishing 
port of Galveston, founded by a French Canadian, Lucien 
Menard, in 1837. It is not only a prosperous but an ex- 
traordinary port. It was wiped out in 1900 by a tidal wave 
which, in a few hours of one terrible night, submerged 
the whole city, drowning 12,000 out of 50,000 inhabitants. 
Galveston has so profited by this disaster as to become the 
third port in the United States. The m_aterial progress 
made by Texas is shown by the immense quantities of agri- 
cultural produce exported from Galveston. What was 
once a desert is in a fair way to take the front rank among 
the producing states of the Union. In all parts of the 
country I have been told about the future importance and 
exceptional wealth of Texas. 

The University 

I was, moreover, able to form some estimate of my own 
from what I saw at the University of Texas, situated at 
Austin, which extended to me a hospitality I shall not 
readily forget. I was greatly indebted for this reception 
to the kindness lavished on me by President Mezes and 
his very distinguished brother-in-law, E. M. House. It 
was after leaving New Orleans and Austin that I felt 
myself really uplifted by the sympathetic interest that 
sustained me to the end of my long trip through the United 
States. 



WASHINGTON TO TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER 25 

San Antonio. El Paso. The American Army 

There is a great contrast between the peaceful, intellectual 
city of Austin and the caravanserai-city of San Antonio. 
The latter is inhabited by Mexicans, Americans and Ger- 
mans. It has the odors and appearance characteristic of 
the South. It is also the point of concentration for the 
United States troops to which I have already referred. 
Slender and elegant young men in khaki wall<. about the 
town, which is near their camp. This is where Colonel 
Roosevelt assembled his "rough riders" at the time of the 
war with Spain. At present the government has no 
difficulty in finding recruits for the cavalry. It makes 
strong appeals to the youth of the country by means of 
attractive placards, exhibited in every state, and especially 
at the universities. Where is the young man who would 
not jump at such an opportunity for a few weeks' or a few 
months' campaigning on the frontier? He regards it as 
sport combined with camping out, a fine expedition and 
perhaps some fighting, all organized for his benefit by the 
government : and if he can persuade himself that he is 
serving his country and some worthy cause, the temptation 
becomes very strong. It is the same everywhere. Does 
not the charm of novelty and danger attract swarms of 
volunteers in France for the aviation service or the colonies ? 
Here, however, the attraction is not sufficient for volunteers 
to consent to serve in the infantry. Nevertheless, some 
infantry have been obtained, where and on what terms I 
do not know, or in what absolutely inadequate numbers. 
Did not the British army itself have to find 448,000 men to 
overcome — temporarily — 40,000 Transvaal Boers ? There 
were ten EngHshmen to every Boer ! American volunteers 
can and do exist only as an accidental exception to the 
natural order of things. I saw some of them, certainly 
not more than 15,000 or 20,000, at San Antonio and El 



26 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Paso, which are, for the time being, the two military 
centers of Texas and the United States. 

The small American town of El Paso, right on the frontier, 
is separated from the little Mexican town of Juarez, Mexico, 
only by the Rio Grande, a small, half-dried-up river. It 
is crossed by several old wooden bridges, which reminded 
me of those in Turkey. At each end of each bridge the two 
armies and the two Customs were face to face. The young 
American volunteers in their new uniforms looked manly 
and determined, with nothing of the swashbuckler about 
them. The Mexican soldiers were more sedate, and had 
a thin and resigned appearance. Like the bridges, they 
reminded me of Turkey. It is said that President Diaz 
was for a long time unaware that by far the greater part of 
his army existed only on paper. It was the same with other 
national institutions, and notably the Mexican ParHament. 



CHAPTER II 

THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. NEITHER CONQUEST 

NOR ABSTENTION 

General Porfirio Diaz's dictatorship. — The danger of the situation. 
— Conquest ? — Mr. Hearst's publications. — President Taft's 
firmness. — An American party in Mexico. — The Cogwheel Presi- 
dent Wilson. — Madero. Huerta. — A case of conscience. — The 
dilemma. — A moral intervention. — The Hague institution. . . . 

General Porfirio Diazes Dictatorship 

Those who, in view of the outbreak of revolutionary 
fury, now look back with regret to General Porfirio Diaz's 
administration, and its undoubted prosperity, are estimat- 
ing it, as I once estimated it myself from afar, on the 
strength of results which were very brilliant but not 
durable. It produced all that can be expected from a 
dictatorship : industrial peace based on moral slavery and 
all the material benefits of this peace, then corruption and 
finally anarchy. A dictator has no right to grow old. 
After a time his supporters, being rich, tired or dead, are 
only the souvenir of his administration, whilst several 
successive generations of active men have been left aside, 
doing nothing, except waiting for their chance, — that is 
to say, for revolution. 

But we must go further back, and it would be altogether 
too summary a proceeding to throw the whole responsibility 
of the Mexican revolution on the shoulders of a single man. 
General Porfirio Diaz's dictatorship itself constituted 
progress, in comparison with what went on under Spanish 

27 



28 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

rule. He certainly was a despot but none the less a be- 
nevolent despot. He began in very much the same way as 
a great many other dictators, and, during his thirty years of 
absolute power, he was accused of many crimes, beginning 
with the slaughter at Vera Cruz. He abused the unlimited 
power he exercised, but he also made good use of it. The 
truth is that his unfortunate country was not educated 
up to self-government, and that the only result of its 
insurrection is a relapse into anarchy. 

The Danger of the Situation 

The situation is dangerous enough in itself, and is made 
still more serious by the extent to which it reacts on the 
different countries having large colonies in Mexico. Some 
very important French interests, as well as EngHsh and 
German, are threatened and seriously involved ; and what 
is to be said of those of the United States? Ten years 
ago, in 1 901, Mexico's exports were 120 milKon dollars 
to the United States, 12 to Great Britain, 5 to Germany, 2 
to France, i to Spain ; in all, 150 million dollars. 

The United States, as Mexico's next-door neighbor, 
are permanently confronted with problems with which 
we in Europe are familiar but which are new to them, like 
many others — the questions that have always arisen be- 
tween neighboring countries when one is strong and well- 
organized and the other is weak and given over to anarchy. 
Crimes, followed by reprisals, are constantly being com- 
mitted between them, generally crimes against common law, 
the work of nomads always ready to escape across the 
frontier. The repetition of these offenses against common 
law ends by constituting a state of disorder which is un- 
endurable by the neighboring country and all foreign 
residents. It is a trouble that is as old as the hills. 

The situation was rendered additionally complicated in 



THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 29 

the United States by the necessity, under which the govern- 
ment found itself, of making a distinction between pro- 
fessional plunderers, not to mention the men sent to stir 
up trouble for jingoistic or speculative purposes, and 
political insurgents, who could naturally count on warm 
support from a large proportion of the American people, 
especially in the Southern states, which are the most 
democratic, and particularly in Texas. Leaving all in- 
terested calculations out of account, American national 
sentiment could not possibly support Porfirio Diaz, the 
usurper, against the Maderists or Constitutionalists who 
opposed him in the name of the very principles obtaining 
in the Union. The state of Texas, for instance, has never 
been and never will be able to turn an indifferent eye on a 
scene of which it is a highly interested spectator. Its 
inhabitants are of an ardent nature, with traditions which, 
in a sense, are Spanish but are preeminently revolutionary. 
At El Paso they attend cockfights and bullfights. As 
agriculturists and business men they are, no doubt, in- 
terested in the maintenance of order, but, at the same 
time, most of them, being genuinely republican and not 
Catholic, have not forgotten their struggles against Spanish 
priestly domination. They remember how the American 
defenders of independence were massacred in the Alamo 
mission church, now kept up, not as a church, but as a 
national monument. San Antonio is proud of having 
been called, since those days, "the cradle of liberty in 
Texas." When I was there in 191 1, I do not suppose 
that any of its inhabitants contemplated a conquest of 
Mexico, but none of them would have agreed to any inter- 
vention intended to paralyze a revolutionary movement 
such as they are proud of having carried to a successful 
issue on their own side of the frontier. Their state of mind 
was complicated. They were in favor of order and insurrec- 
tion — especially insurrection. 



30 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Taking the most evident facts and interests into account, 
and leaving out the inevitable maneuvers of fishers in 
troubled waters, we must see that the present prosperity 
of the former Mexican provinces which have become an 
integral part of the United States cannot fail to react on 
the neighboring provinces which have remained Mexican 
but are penetrated by American influences, and to excite, as 
can readily be imagined, all kinds of aspirations, ranging 
from single-minded emulation to regret and covetousness. 
Thus it is true that, with the best of good faith, — in 
consequence, in fact, of its good faith, which is as un- 
doubted as its interest in the matter, — the Washington 
cabinet is at a loss as to how to settle the Mexican question 
and thereby give satisfaction to impatient public opinion, 
I would like to discuss this question impartially, basing 
my remarks on the experience I may have acquired in 
my diplomatic and political career, which happens to 
have brought me into touch with other conflicts of the 
same kind. 

Conquest ? 

In these cases there is always some one to recommend 
the use of strong measures, that is to say, armed interven- 
tion and conquest in the name of outraged national dignity. 
So extremely simple a plan is inadmissible. Its only ex- 
cuse, to my mind, is ignorance and a patriotism which, I 
know, is often sincere and disinterested but very short- 
sighted. It plays into the hands of all sorts of interests, 
personally ambitious schemes and more than suspicious 
speculations — interests that are very active and gener- 
ally combined, while the national interest, on the contrary, 
is undecided and scattered A special Press, which pro- 
vides the partisans of this policy with arguments and 
encouragement, has grown up. It appeals to fine senti- 
ments and the love of great deeds and, at the same time. 



THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 3 1 

it favors immense operations calculated to bring in both 
glory and money, for which reason it appeals much more 
strongly to the reader's imagination than does the honest 
newspaper which confines itself to advising him to keep 
quiet. 

Mr. Hearsi's Publications 

In the United States, where they do nothing by halves, 
there is a whole string of newspapers, magazines and re- 
views, well known as the *' Hearst Publications," that are 
every day at work announcing, preparing the next, the 
inevitable war of which we have heard and will hear so 
of ten. ^ In fact these publications, apparently very rich, 
have a remarkable organization which has to be not only 
national but international. They have their agencies of 
information, ''the International News Service," in the best 
quarters of all the capitals in Europe, as well as in America. 
Their principal European offices are located in London, in 
the Haymarket and, in Berlin, on Friedrichstrasse. Speak- 
ing of Paris only, their French office is 2 rue de la Paix, not 
very far from our gigantic association or trust of the manu- 
facturers and constructors of material of war (an association 
whose part, clearly defined by its official statutes, art. 8, 
is to influence the public powers, government, parlia- 
ment, administration and so on). Each of the European 
branches of the Hearst publications recruits the ablest 
reporters from amongst the strongest newspapers of their 
respective countries, in order to collect sensational in- 
formation from well-chosen sources. They cable to each 
other and exchange this information, so that they can 
keep public opinion constantly in a state of feverish alarm 
and bring, when it is required, fresh arguments to the 
international body of the so-called ''patriotic" news- 
papers, as well as to Congress and the legislatures in favor 

^ This was written in 1913. 



32 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

of naval and military expenses. What can a poor, in- 
dependent newspaper do, what can the most honest man 
do, even the most honest government, against such a 
powerful organization? In America every one knows 
that the war with Spain was forced upon Mr. McKin- 
ley's government by the Hearst publications. Since 
that time, these publications have naturally developed 
and enlarged their ambition and their organization in 
proportion to the increase of armaments. They have 
been, as regards the Mexican question, more and more 
engaged in representing armed American intervention as 
inevitable: "The determination of government," they 
say in substance, "and the evident interest of the American 
people are of very little account. The Mexican question 
will not be settled by reason but by the force of circum- 
stances. Some day, a handful of American business men 
in Mexico will manage, if they find out the right way, to 
overcome the ignorance and pacific inertia of the entire 
population of the United States and the government as 
well." 

President Taffs Firmness 

This is what I heard in 1911. This did not prevent 
President Taft (whose adversaries, and especially his 
friends, have so greatly deplored his kind-heartedness, 
which they described as carried to the verge of weakness) 
from holding out, with most exceptional energy and cool- 
ness, against these appeals, made even by some of those 
who approached him most closely. If President Taft 
had yielded to these influences, the question would now be 
settled in favor of an irremediable conquest. He did not 
give way, and this by itself, to my mind, entitles him to 
general gratitude. Maneuvers which have proved suc- 
cessful in all times and in all countries were checkmated 
by his steadfast opposition. I described these maneuvers 



THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 33 

years ago in connection with the occupation of Tunis — 
an occupation which we were far from desiring and which 
we postponed as long as possible.^ They were carried on 
quite as actively in Egypt, the Transvaal, Morocco and 
Asia. They have now found a most favorable sphere in 
Mexico. As a natural outcome of the situation, an Ameri- 
can party has been formed in the five Mexican provinces 
bordering on the southern frontier of the United States. 

An American Party in Mexico 

This party does not confine itself to clamoring for annexa- 
tion, but also does its best to make annexation inevitable. 
All this is a matter of course, the first item in its program 
and the ABC of the most elementary speculation. Every 
one connected with the owners of the petroleum wells, 
mines and ranches who has taken root in the provinces 
of Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Lower California 
wants to be under American government and the protec- 
tion of the Federal troops, whereby the property they 
have acquired would immediately rise to twice or perhaps 
ten times its present value. This is a temptation which 
presents itself everywhere, with this difference, that, 
to the United States, the temptation is much stronger 
than it is to our old European states ; for in this case we 
have to deal, not with some distant territory, but with a 
neighboring country. For the past fifty years the United 
States have been constantly extending and spreading to- 
ward everything around them. Will they stop now? — 
The question has to be put in this way. — Or, nourishing 
high aspirations, as we shall see, to take the lead in the gen- 
eral movement in favor of peace, order and conciUation, will 
they now plead the cause of conquest and make themselves 

1 See "La Politique Franfaise en Tunisie," i vol., 8vo, published by Plon, 
Paris, 1890. 



D 



34 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

conspicuous by contradicting themselves in the most 
cynical way? They have no lack of pretexts and excuses. 
We need not delude ourselves on this head. They can, 
first of all, anticipate a future which, though decidedly 
doubtful, is none the less possible, and which will inevitably 
be brought nearer by a continuance of the revolution. 
The day may come when several out of the twenty-seven 
Mexican provinces, tired of insecurity and impotence and 
led away by the maneuvers to which I have referred and 
by the unparalleled success of states that are growing 
rich next door to them but across the frontier, will claim 
the right to be conquered as an advantage to themselves, 
or will simply ask for that of taking a vote of the people 
to decide on their nationality. Personally, I believe 
that if the United States go on extending indefinitely, 
they will weaken, and end by a split. Even supposing 
that some of the Mexican provinces want to yield them- 
selves up and that all that has to be done is to take them, 
all the more pressure will have to be brought to bear on 
the others which remain refractory. Constant and ener- 
getic action will be needed in Mexico, not to mention the 
distrust, and also the hostility, which it would be very 
difficult to remove in South America and Canada. At 
present the United States are far from being ripe for this 
action. In any case, it is clearly to their interest not to 
hurry. It should be fully realized that events are urging 
them on only too fast as it is. It is not so easy for the 
United States to turn a deaf ear to the appeals of Americans 
and foreigners who are imploring their assistance from 
morning till night and from night till morning — assistance 
at their own gates, on their own frontier, almost on their 
own soil. How are they to resist these appeals which, 
though interested, are interesting and moving and often 
desperate, coming from compatriots and Europeans who 
have been threatened and plundered, crying out for help, 



THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 35 

fleeing with their wives and children from gangs of mur- 
derers? Meanwhile, the newspapers are circulating stories 
of these scenes of horror and publishing photographs, 
letters and names. The temptation is certainly very 
strong, and I know more than one American statesman 
who would have proved '' weaker" than Mr. Taft aipid, 
in his place, would have patriotically given way. 

The Cogwheel 

Yes, but beware of putting your foot in the cogwheel, 
or at any rate realize that you will not be able to pull it 
out again. Action of this kind at a distance is exhausting 
enough for a European power and exceeds the strength 
of a young state. France, for instance, in less than a cen- 
tury, has allowed herself to be dragged into one conquest 
after another — Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, even Indo-China, 
Madagascar, West Africa and the Soudan, while holding 
on to her possessions in America and the Pacific. These 
are a great many conquests for one country to undertake 
in so short a time, and a republican country too ! It 
also remains to be seen how she will be able to bear the 
burden and risk of this excessive expansion. We have 
some indication already in her financial and social difii- 
culties, now that she has to provide not only for the mil- 
liards her wars in the past have cost her, but for the milliards 
she needs for her colonial expeditions, her battleships and 
the army that keeps all her young men in barracks for 
three years. At any rate, she has stood the strain of 
this very severe training up to the present, just as Eng- 
land has done, because she has an old-established military 
organization which, even now, is semi-imperial; France, 
thinly populated as she is, has three armies. The United 
States, on the contrary, have no real armed force, except 
their fleet and some volunteers, and they could not have 



36 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

one, even if they were much more densely populated, 
without at the same time losing what constitutes their 
economic greatness, their unity, their prestige and, in a 
word, their future, and without renouncing their traditions, 
their principles and their reason for existence. The poHcy 
of a democracy cannot be that of the Roman Empire or 
of the Russian Empire or of any empire. The choice must 
be made. For the sake of argument, let us consider as 
nothing the risks, the difhculties and the duration of such 
an enterprise ; let us suppose Mexico to be conquered, 
protected or administered by the Americans. ''We could 
not," they themselves say, "administer the country with- 
out a force and means of action which would be a negation 
and eventually the destruction of the system itself. To 
act effectively in Mexico, we should have to concentrate 
at Washington powers which would leave us absolutely 
no liberty for ourselves." ''All arbitrary power calls for 
an arbitrary force. How is a force of this kind to be 
limited and, once we embark upon this course, where are 
we to stop? " 

President Wilson. Madero. Huerta 

This is evident, and this is certainly why President 
Wilson, following President Taf t, has been as much opposed 
as was his predecessor to any policy of conquest in Mexico. 
But here again complications occur, and men of absolute 
mental tendencies, in their wretched mania for reducing 
everything to antitheses and dilemmas, try to force 
him to choose between two extremes — annexation or 
abstention. This would be too simple a way of dealing 
with the question. The exiled president, Porfirio Diaz, 
has left behind him the prestige of a reign of more than 
thirty years. The country, having obeyed him like one 
man, so long as his will was the strongest influence, has 



THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 37 

been educating itself backwards. It is no longer fit to 
govern itself. It needs time, credit and order. An honest 
man, President Madero, supported by General Huerta, 
took ofiice. He and his friends were lured into a trap and 
murdered under circumstances the horror of which exceeds 
anything in Shakespeare. Thereupon General Huerta, the 
supposed murderer (fecit qui projuit) caused himself to 
be proclaimed president in Madero's place, and immediately 
proceeded to request the foreign governments to recognize 
his tenure of power. What power? That was the first 
question. Did he rule the whole country as it was ruled 
under the iron hand of General Porfirio Diaz ? Could he 
go so far as to say that he would govern Mexico and make 
himself obeyed and enforce respect for treaties, laws and 
order? In the place of a legal and regular system could 
he at least produce any guarantee in the shape of some 
force which, whether accepted or merely endured by the 
people, is admittedly predominant? No ; the country was 
only partly under liis rule. The Northern states accused 
him of restoring a dictatorship a hundred times worse 
than that of Diaz and of putting the national clock back 
three quarters of a century. They called for a con- 
stitutional president, and the outcome of the conflict 
between the two parties was destruction and bloodshed. 
The more he was threatened and the more precarious he 
felt his position to be, the more President Huerta insisted. 
What was the attitude of the President of the United 
States? He proclaimed his strong desire for peace, and 
proved it by his acts. In his Message to Congress on 
Dec. 2 he said: "We are Mexico's friends, and that is 
why we do not forget that we are also the friends and 
champions of constitutional government. We will recog- 
nize the government of Mexico but not the usurpation 
and destruction of that government." 



38 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

A Case of Conscience 

In short, President Wilson did not care to extend his 
hand to a murderer who, unhke Diaz, was not even a for- 
tunate soldier. He declined to give his indorsement to 
crime or his confidence to a temporary and obscure state 
of things ; and yet his opponents accused him of having 
scruples and acting as an intellectual instead of as a states- 
man. It seems to be forgotten that Europe herself was 
in no hurry to recognize the Portuguese revolution, the 
accession of the king of Servia and even the Chinese 
revolution. It is forgotten that President Porfirio Diaz 
himself had to wait nearly a year before President Hayes 
recognized him on behalf of the United States, in 1878, 
and that he had to enforce obedience from his own people 
before he obtained the confidence of the world at large. 
All this is nothing more than the ABC of poHtics. The 
head of a state is not asked to produce certificates of vir- 
tue, but, as a matter of decency as well as of prudence, 
recognition is not given immediately to the first person 
who asks for it. Moreover, there is nothing to prove that, 
after having satisfied his conscience by a natural and 
necessary show of repugnance. President Wilson will not 
end by acknowledging some genuine government legally 
constituted and accepted by the country. If President 
Wilson had not made his protest, I would Hke to know 
how American opinion would have received his indorse- 
ment of the dictatorship and his assistance in crushing 
the revolution. Is it the duty of a modern statesman to 
demoralize his country ? 

The Presidents ^^ Innocence^ ^ 

For these reasons, I respect the ^'scruples" and what 
has been called the ''innocence" of President Wilson and 



THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 39 

his ''masterly inactivity," and I ask myself whether these 
scruples do not reflect the real feeling of the United States, 
for it is easy to make mistakes about what is called public 
opinion. The genuine opinion, which lies the deepest, 
also has scruples and is at times silent and timid. It 
seldom makes its voice heard, whereas superficial opinion 
is always dinning its views into our ears. 

The Dilemma 

The worst of it is that scruples do not provide a means 
of settling the question, and, I repeat, the settlement is 
not to be found in either of the two terms of the dilemma, 
abstention or conquest. 

Abstention may end by becoming morally and materially 
impossible. This is a fact, and this is why I regret that 
there has been no means of providing for this impossibility 
by an agreement among the Powers. The time may come 
when, apart from what the United States think, the uni- 
versal conscience will be moved by horror and indignation 
to protest against a passive and indefinite abstention and 
will declare that such a state of things has already lasted 
long enough and cannot be allowed to continue. 

When that time comes, the government of the United 
States and all the governments concerned will have to 
join hands in obedience to this command or heartfelt 
ejaculation or force of circumstances, whichever we may 
call it. 

A Moral Intervention 

Would this, then, be conquest? No, and no one will 
be deluded into considering it as such, if the United States 
succeed in their endeavor to prove their disinterestedness 
and thereby reassure South America, Canada and Europe 
as a whole, and if they do not blush to act on the principle 
that "honesty is the best policy." This will be the in- 



40 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

evitable intervention, to which I have often referred, 
reduced to its minimum, which will be either suspicious or 
reassuring, according to the spirit of the intervening gov- 
ernment and country; for the problem will be solved by 
spirit and not by violence. Here is something new. 
Violence will make the situation hopelessly involved. A 
spirit of disinterestedness and conciliation and a true 
conception of the interest of the United States can alone, 
with time and patience, solve the difficulty. 

I am convinced that this spirit exists and predominates 
in the United States. Whoever treats it as of no account 
will dig a great gulf between his policy and the country. 

Time will show whether or not there is any foundation 
for my optimism. 

The Hague Institution 

I must add a few words in regard to the ^' moral" that 
certain skeptics are rather too ready to deduce from the 
Mexico affair. Some writers, of not inconsiderable weight, 
have seen in it a fresh proof of ineffectiveness on the part 
of the Hague institution.^ They once more discover that 
this budding institution, which, in spite of all obstacles, 
has already rendered very great services, was unable to 
prevent the Transvaal war, the Russo-Japanese war, the 
Turco-Italian war, the Balkan war and so on, and not 
even the Mexican revolution ! The newspapers take up 
the tale one after the other, and parliaments vote all the 

^ It is true that the present war in Europe, the violation of the neutrahty 
of Belgium and of all the principles of the rights of men — to say nothing 
of treaties themselves — has, on the other hand, bound together all the 
countries combating the aggression of Germany in a sort of coalition for 
the defense of the Right, and consequently, for the defense of the work of 
The Hague. 

The present war has brought into conflict two opposite camps totally 
diverse : On one side the defenders, on the other the despisers of the 
Right. (March, 1915.) 



THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO 4 1 

war credits they are asked for on the strength of the argu- 
ment that never has there been so much fighting. 

The answer to this is that there was more fighting be- 
fore the Hague institution came into being, and that 
while it has not succeeded, as if by enchantment, in teach- 
ing reason to the governments of the great mihtary powers, 
it has nevertheless enabled them, during the past ten 
years, to arrive at a friendly or legal settlement of con- 
flicts which, at other times, would have started general 
conflagrations. This is progress to an immense, unhoped- 
for and incalculable extent, and it is only a beginning, — for 
us the dawn of a new day ; if only we have faith to discern it. 
Moreover, nobody at the two Hague Congresses imagined 
it was possible so to transform humanity as to prevent wars 
and revolutions everywhere and forever. We confined our 
ambition to trying to prevent a few, and in this we suc- 
ceeded. In common justice this is what ought to be 
pointed out, instead of reproaching us with that which we 
neither accomplished nor expected to accomplish. 

And now let us go on our way and return to our travel 
impressions, unfortunately clouded by events. 



CHAPTER III 



CALIFORNIA 



I. The Long Distances. Arizona. Los Angeles. San Francisco. 
— 2. Labor and Agriculture. — 3. Yellow Immigration. — 
4. An Eldorado. Touring. Tlie American Cote d'azur. From 
Los Angeles to Del Monte. Pasadena. 

I. The Long Distances. Arizona. Los Angeles. San 

Francisco 

Europeans in the United States are invariably baffled 
at first by the great distance between one place and another 
and the endless extent of sparsely populated country. In 
Texas, for instance, which is rich in resources, but poor 
up to the present as regards water, one can travel on the 
railroad for two days through what is nothing but a desert, 
while fertile CaKfornia, which, like Texas, is larger than 
France, has only two million inhabitants, the large number of 
whom live in the towns and cities. The new state of Ari- 
zona looks as large as Texas and more desert, if possible. 
The journey from Los Angeles to San Francisco takes up an 
entire day, or more than twelve hours, from morning to 
evening. No doubt the trains are slow and the lines have 
only a single track ; but if the European tries to imagine a 
France with fewer people than Paris, New York or Chicago, 
the problems connected with the future of this country will 
immediately present themselves in a new light. 

A country such as this is evidently destined to become 
a nursery, not only for plants, but for men and ideas, and 
a field for new experiments, the results of which will react 

42 



CALIFORNIA 43 

upon and transform the Old World ; but, in the meantime, 
any attempt by European travelers, statesmen and writers 
to forecast the future of the United States with any degree 
of exactitude can only be unreliable — even more so than 
the predictions that mature age is so fond of making as to 
young men's futures. 

However, the public idea of distance is steadily under- 
going alteration, even in Europe. Great cities, such as 
Berlin, London and Moscow, are, like Paris, extending in 
all directions. Electric tramways have enabled new 
American cities to be laid out on an immense scale, leaving 
plenty of space for parks, avenues, squares, promenades, 
schools, museums and other public institutions. This 
has not prevented the building of skyscrapers in the busi- 
ness districts. Do what he will, it is not at all easy for a 
European to become accustomed to the long journeys he 
has to make, and to set aside the right amount of time for 
them. In Washington, the residential districts and the 
embassies are a very long way from the Capitol — a fact 
which does not seem to strike the Americans at all. At 
Los Angeles, where my host lived in a villa in the best, 
I might say the most sumptuous, part of the city, I was 
seven miles from the railroad depot. When I was at 
San Francisco, I had to lecture at the University of Cali- 
fornia, which is at Berkeley, and Leland Stanford Uni- 
versity at Palo Alto. To reach Berkeley, which I took 
to be a suburb, and where a great many San Franciscans 
live, I had first of all to get to the landing stage of the big 
ferryboats that cross the bay, as the New York boats 
cross the Hudson River, and then take an electric car. 
This means an hour's journey each way, every day, for 
business men. Palo Alto can be reached by railroad 
alone, but this also involves an hour's journey. No one 
thinks anything of it. People make their arrangements 
accordingly; read, relax and rest. Constantly repeated 



44 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

short journeys of this kind are no doubt counted as so 
much rest by Americans. They think nothing of travehng. 
I saw an old man of ninety-two, my admirable and re- 
gretted friend, John Bigelow, start from New York on an 
annual round of visits in Europe. Young men and girls 
cross the American continent in all directions on the 
slightest pretext, to make the acquaintance of others and 
fraternize with them. I know old San Franciscans, Ra- 
phael Weill, for instance, who go to France every year and 
are surprised at my surprise. They make humorous com- 
parisons between the distances people travel nowadays 
and fifty years ago, when it took at least a month or a 
month and a half to go from Havre to New York and as 
much from New York to San Francisco. Far from com- 
plaining of the number of days occupied by these journeys, 
they congratulate themselves on its smallness, and they 
profit by it. 

2. Labor and Agriculture 

To live on such a scale, people must have large incomes, 
and, in this connection, all sorts of problems crop up. 
To begin with, how is such a vast country to be organized, 
and with what kind of inhabitants? and where are the 
inhabitants themselves to be found? Americans are too 
busy to burden themselves with large families, and they 
have to fall back upon adoption, that is to say, immigra- 
tion. European immigration is not sufficient, and, as we 
shall see further on, its best sources are drying up. It 
provides only a comparatively infinitesimal number of 
hands for agriculture and domestic service. The result is 
that living is expensive and that skilled European work- 
men do not settle in California unless they can obtain 
very high wages. Masons and carpenters are paid at what 
look like exorbitant rates, amounting in some cases to 
eight dollars a day. To be exact, a carpenter can earn 



CALIFORNIA 45 

up to six dollars and a mason or bricklayer up to seven 
or eight dollars for a day's work, strictly limited to eight 
hours, and even these rates are lower than formerly. When 
the work of rebuilding the city was at its height, men were 
paid as much as eleven dollars a day and a dollar an hour 
overtime. This is partly due to the fact that the men have 
a powerful union and can and do dictate terms. Each craft 
regulates its own wages. Only the art workmen or spe- 
ciahsts, having no union, are in less demand and, con- 
sequently, are not so well treated. There are very few 
negroes in California. The cKmate on the coast does not 
suit them, and moreover they have been crowded out by 
the yellow races. 

To get over the difficulty of finding cooks, maids and 
other servants, people contrive to secure Chinese cooks 
and Japanese valets, butlers and grooms. There are no 
women at all in the leading hotel at Seattle. Young Japan- 
ese, known as '' bellboys," take the place of kitchenmaids 
and chambermaids. A few privileged hotel proprietors 
engage Scandinavian girls. There are various specialties. 
For instance, the washing is now done by Frenchmen at 
San Francisco instead of Chinese, and the French form a 
large and much-esteemed colony, by whom I was feted. 
UnHke many others, they cause no trouble. There are also 
French waiters, who are doing well. Of course I do not 
take into account exceptional cases, such as the wages paid 
to some chauffeurs when motor cars were in their infancy, 
or even the celebrated French chef who, to my knowledge, 
was paid fifteen thousand dollars a year by a big New 
York hotel and was at hberty to spend six months of the 
year in France. 

But then comes the agricultural problem. The Cali- 
fornian farmer not only has to till a magnificent soil, pro- 
ducing all kinds of fruit, vegetables and cereals, but he 
has to attend to the industrial part of his business, such 



46 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

as the reaping, packing in cans or otherwise, conveyance 
to markets, sale and export. It is a combination of agri- 
culture, industry and commerce which cannot be ef- 
fected without men and money, in a country which, having 
no population, has few roads outside the railways and 
tramways. The difficulty is generally met by keeping 
near the main Hnes of railroad or breeding horses on a 
large scale, pending the coming of the motor car. 

Let me describe briefly how the raising of live stock is 
generally carried on, between San Francisco and Sacra- 
mento, for instance, with the smallest amount of help, 
and how it is combined with agriculture. On either side 
of the railroad, at the foot of the majestic chain of the 
Sierra Nevada, stretches a limitless, uninterrupted green 
plain. Here browse and multiply flocks of sheep and 
lambs, in quantities exceeding all that I had ever imagined. 
Further on are herds of cows, also very numerous, with 
the dairy — very simple, but large and well contrived — 
in the middle. Then we come to the horses, and here 
and there are the turkeys, chickens and hogs. The horses 
are gradually broken in by cowboys, first for riding and 
then for harness. When the time comes for plowing, 
harrowing or rolling, the farmer takes as many horses as 
he wants from the ranch where they are all left at Hberty ; 
a young horse is harnessed between two old ones, and so 
on. With teams of six or eight, or even more, immense 
fields are soon made ready for sowing; and afterwards, 
if there is a rush to get in the harvest, the farmer who has 
finished first hires out his teams to others. All this is 
becoming simplified in proportion as estates are split up 
or, rather, lose their enormous size ; but still the supply 
of labor is insufficient, because cereal growing is not 
everything; there are fruits to be gathered and packed, 
cows to be milked and so on. This is where the problem 
of Chinese, Hindu and Japanese immigration comes in. 



CALIFORNIA 47 



Yellow Immigration 



Nobody wants coolie immigration on a large scale. It 
would be too much for some states, particularly California. 
It would bring wages down to starvation point, for the 
American workman, whose numerous needs are out of all 
comparison with Oriental simplicity. Negro competition 
does not constitute the same problem in those states in 
which they are more numerous than they are in CaHfornia, 
because, unlike Japanese and Chinese, who take all their 
savings home to their own country, the negroes spend 
their money where they earn it and, consequently, work 
less regularly. The immigration of yellow workers on a 
large scale, supposing the American workman made up 
his mind to submit to it, would also pave the way to a 
serious danger for the United States — a danger which 
it is to the interest of every civilized country, including 
Japan as well as Europe and America, to prevent. The 
country would be divided into three classes at least, the 
first consisting of the dominant white race, the second of 
the subordinated yellow race, and the third of unemployed 
and wastrels — the dregs, in fact, of the population. This 
would be in contradiction to, and the end of the democratic 
system in the United States. It would mean what might 
be called the automatic preparation of dictatorship, decom- 
position and anarchy. The question of importing yellow 
labor, even into Europe, has been more than once raised, 
and there does not seem to be anything out of the way 
in the idea of a factory run by European foremen and 
overseers and imported labor ; but no one has ventured, 
or will venture, on such a revolutionary enterprise. The 
Japanese themselves do not want to see too many openings 
for yellow labor in the United States, principally because 
it is not to their interest to help American competition, 
and also because they do not care to create a source of 



48 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

constant trouble and conflict with America, which would 
be as injurious to one country as to the other. 

Are we to conclude that yellow immigration in America 
should be stopped altogether? This question, like others, 
is one of moderation and tact. The problem will be and 
is being solved by observing mutual consideration and 
following a middle course. 

Japanese "intellectuals" are admitted to American 
universities, and I saw a considerable number of them at 
Stanford. They live on terms of comradeship with Ameri- 
can students. A great many Chinese and Japanese ser- 
vants remained in California or returned there after the 
passing of the immigration laws a few years ago. The 
Hawaiian islands, which are full of Japanese, but have 
become American, have acted as a naturalization center for 
many of them, and this process has been carried to such 
an extent that the Japanese government spontaneously took 
steps to prevent such an abuse of emigration. 

By law, the United States government places the immigra- 
tion of yellow labor on the same footing as foreign immi- 
gration in general; but, as a matter of fact, the state 
legislatures, and, to a still greater extent, public opinion 
and the Press, in the states concerned, are more or less 
masters of the situation as regards opposition to coolie 
immigration. It is clear that a few thousand Japanese at 
San Francisco can always be boycotted or at any rate wor- 
ried. This is a local question which the Federal govern- 
ment is no more able than the Japanese government to 
settle as it pleases. 

Due account must be taken of the temper of the work- 
ing classes and of the Press. This temper changes under 
the influence of education, reason and experience, but the 
process takes time. For instance, Japanese servants are 
much more welcome at Seattle, in the state of Washington, 
than they are at San Francisco. Why? I am told that 



CALIFORNIA 49 

California has a sort of Patriotic League which acts on 
the more impressionable and excites them continually 
against Japan. At present these incitements have very 
little effect. In any case, there is no such league at Seattle, 
where people even regret the restriction of emigration by 
the Japanese government and would like to have more 
Japanese in the country. The stories of Japanese acting 
as spies are treated with ridicule. ''Those who come," 
I am told, ''are nearly all educated young men who want 
to learn. They all study English, and conscientiously 
jot down words they want to remember, whereupon they 
are promptly denounced as spies. This kind of thing 
strikes us as laughable. What is there to spy about here? 
What have we to hide? Such suspicions are absurd, but 
they check the desired immigration more effectually 
than laws could do. There are only 3000 Japanese at 
San Francisco, and more than three times that number 
— 10,000 — at Seattle, and yet all the objections come 
from San Francisco, where there is a poHtical anti- Japanese 
organization run by a few cranks and supported by unedu- 
cated people. If you take all the Japanese in Cahfornia, 
you would not find 40,000 ; and half that number for the 
state of Washington and not quite so many for the rest 
of the United States, and you have a total of less than 
100,000 Japanese in the whole of the Union. It is a case 
of much ado about very httle." 

What we need is to face the facts. European and 
American missionaries have been at work in continually 
increasing numbers in China and Japan for nearly half a 
century; we have insisted on teaching the yellow race, 
and now we are surprised because, after having been taught 
by us, they travel and complete their education! There 
are young Chinese, holding scholarships, all over Europe. 
Who invites them but the governm.ents themselves, with 
the consent of our own manufacturers, who want customers ? 



50 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

In my own native district, the Sarthe, I used to see a class 
of Chinese students every year at our mihtary school at 
La Fleche. There were about forty of them two years 
ago, all very intelligent, steady and interested in every- 
thing — in mihtary science, which we teach them, as in 
agriculture, with which they are acquainted. After 
leaving the school they serve for a time in our regiments 
or at the mihtary academies (St. Cyr and Saumur). They 
are to be found all over France and all over Europe. How 
can we wonder at other Chinese crossing the Pacific so as 
to learn Enghsh and visit America ? Chinese and Japanese 
commissions go all over the world. In what way are they 
a special danger for America? 

By whatever means it is brought about, a process of 
trickhng in is going on, owing to a more or less tacit agree- 
ment between the two governments, but it is certainly 
not a flood, and this trickle is a long way from providing 
CaUfornia with the labor she requires to develop as Oregon 
and the other Western states have done. Considering 
the difficulties, one cannot but admire the manner in 
which the Americans have made their west coast what it 
is, and, still more, what it promises to be. We have been 
confronted with the same questions in our colonies. With 
such a low birth rate as ours, what could we do in Northern 
Africa without the Arabs, Moors and Kabyles, not to men- 
tion Tunisians, Sicilians, Maltese and Spaniards? 

4. An Eldorado. Touring. From Los Angeles to Del 
Monte. Pasadena 

California is, like our North African colonies, a garden 
that flourishes in spite of unfavorable circumstances 
and the earthquakes that occurred four years ago. They 
are already forgotten, but they made their sinister, destruc- 
tive fury only too evident, and, as they follow an almost 



CALIFORNIA 5 1 

invariable course, there is no denying that they may occur 
again, here as elsewhere. This country is, as I have said, 
a garden, and what a garden ! I thought the people who 
told me about it must be exaggerating, but the soil calls 
every one to witness its fertihty, and we can estimate it 
by its magnificent trees. The oaks, cedars, pines, rubber 
trees and sequoias or redwood trees, in fact everything 
that is left of the wonderful Californian forests and has 
not been burned or rooted up, helps to give one an idea of 
the astounding richness of this country. From Los Angeles 
to San Francisco the railway runs alongside the Pacific, 
at the foot of great undulating hills. They are not moun- 
tains, and their mighty green-clad curves look Hke im- 
mense meadows lifted up by a heaving ocean. When 
the upward and downward wave of hill and forest at length 
subsides and the train finds its way into flat country, we 
come to an endless succession of plantations. It was spring 
when I came here, and I could see orchards of orange 
trees, vines, plum trees, apricot trees, cherry trees, almond 
trees and fig trees. It was like hundreds and hundreds 
of acres of a trim, well-kept, flowered carpet spread over 
miles and miles of country. All this fruit, after being 
gathered in the season, is generally sorted by machinery. 
The grapeseeds are extracted by machinery, after which 
the fruit is exported in the form of raisins. The plums 
are packed in boxes, also by machinery (with the best 
fruit on top and the others underneath!). All kinds of 
jams, marmalades and jellies, and also wine, are made. 
It is even asserted that Bordeaux people import wine from 
California, but official statistics are against this, for the 
excellent reason that Californian wine is very dear, even 
on the spot. It costs the grower more than twenty cents 
a bottle, and of course the twenty cents expand into a 
dollar at a restaurant. Californian clarets are none the 
less good, though much coarser than ours. They have 



52 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

been a source of wealth to various Italian-Californians 
whose palaces I have seen. Mere cook-boys twenty years 
ago, they are now very important and much-esteemed 
men, worth milHons. When we remember that this country 
became known through its gold mines and that all these 
flourishing crops have been added, taking the place of 
forest or desert, thanks to irrigation, we must admit that 
the efforts of man and of civihzation deserve something 
better than the disdain of skeptics. 

With all this, I have said nothing about the crops of 
vegetables, maize, rice, potatoes, artichokes, endives, 
olives and beetroot. I am in danger of forgetting that 
there are all kinds of climate here, including night mists 
that keep the grass fresh and green through the heat of 
summer and help to provide pasture for the innumerable 
cows I have already mentioned but whose milk I have not 
extolled as it deserves. From it the CaHfornians make 
cream, celebrated all over America, and a San Francisco 
butter which is certainly the best I have tasted since I 
left France and is equal to good Danish or Normandy 
butter. I can say as much for the meat, poultry and fish. 
Californian cooking is a surprise and a delight for a 
Frenchman, no matter how particular or entitled to be 
particular he may be. The Californians have as culti- 
vated palates as the French, and a taste for good cheer 
and appetizing dishes. Anything served at their tables can 
be eaten with confidence. What wonders our cooks could 
accomphsh here ! If I were the state of Cahfornia, I would 
start a French cookery school at San Francisco. It would 
be all that is wanted to complete Californian culture. 

The cultivation of all these different kinds of produce of the 
soil demands not only labor, but care, science and education, 
and the universities devote part of their teaching to this. 

The earth does not confine itself to producing gold and 
eatables. We must not overlook petroleum, which crops 



CALIFORNIA 53 

up in all sorts of places, even on the seashore ; and petro- 
leum, like the grapevine, has created a great deal of wealth. 
I have heard of a Los Angeles surveyor who could get very 
Httle money out of his clients and had to take a few odd bits 
of land as payment instead. Up to the time of his death he 
was trying in vain to find a buyer for his scraps of real es- 
tate, and his widow was equally unsuccessful ; but one fine 
day petroleum wells were discovered on adjoining land, and 
then on her land, so that now, instead of being hard up, she 
has an income of not less than a thousand dollars a day 
from what is on her land and under it. Petroleum is used 
here instead of coal to run locomotives, factory furnaces 
and even the machinery in the big San Francisco stores. I 
saw some of this machinery, and found that a very high 
and regular temperature was obtained by a mixture of petro- 
leum vapor and air, without smell and without accidents : 
a remarkable instance of progress. 

Agriculture and mining are of little importance, my Los 
Angeles friends tell me, in comparison with the newest of 
the great resources the country possesses — tourist trafhc. 

The climate, the beauty and variety of the scenery and the 
excellence of its products have attracted a steadily growing 
cHentele to CaHfornia. It is the United States' Riviera. 

No one who has not seen the surroundings of Los Angeles 
— Pasadena, for instance — or such coast resorts as Santa 
Barbara and Del Monte can form any idea of what these 
favored places are or what they will be. I do not say 
this district can compete with our Riviera. On the con- 
trary, I consider that the Pacific will not attain the same 
standard of brilliant, majestic beauty as the Mediterranean, 
always provided that we do not spoil Nature with the 
works of our hands. That sea will ever stand alone as 
the birthplace of our civilization ; but no one who has not 
seen the Californian Riviera can imagine what American 
civilization has already produced. 



54 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

I have lived happily in France ; I know England and the 
shady groves of Oxford and Cambridge; I have seen the 
spring in Algerian oases; and I thought myself hlase; 
but I found that the Americans have covered the most 
beautiful valleys in Cahfornia with grass, flowers and 
fruit, and have created therein, with their cottages designed 
after the most refined style of English domestic architec- 
ture, their artificial rain and their schools of landscape 
gardening and horticulture, what I can only call offshoots 
of the terrestrial paradise. 

Every villa at Pasadena stands amid its own lawns, 
shaded by its own roof. Every cottage is different from 
its neighbor and is covered with roses and geranium creepers. 
The place is one mass of palms, mimosas, ever-green oaks, 
carob trees and magnolias. Here and there the sun sends 
a shaft of light through the deep shade to some brilhant 
flower bed and fills the odorous blossoms — honeysuckle, 
wallflower, heliotrope and glycina — with perfume. The 
flowers of every garden in the world are here assembled 
in one. 

Over all the gardens created by Americans hovers 
inspiration in the form of the American woman. I shall 
have something to say about her as I shall of the delight- 
ful way in which girls and young men associate in the 
California universities. I shall also revert to a question 
that interests a great many people here, as elsewhere : 
the so-called Japanese peril. Will the Japanese interfere 
with the development of the new continent and, conse- 
quently, with the peace of the world at large? Are they 
or are they not making ready for war? Is war between 
the United States and Japan possible? I have discussed 
this question, with the consent of my American and Jap- 
anese friends, in my lectures in the Far West ; and farther 
on I will summarize my impressions with the utmost 
possible impartiahty. 



CHAPTER IV 

WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 

I. At the Universities. Berkeley. The girls' dinner. Volun- 
tary servants. Young Americans traveling in France. — 2. An 
Election Campaign. For or against women. The boulevards of 
Paris. Miserable young girls. The three husbands. — 3. The 
French Woman. A French wife. — 4. Votes for Women. 
The suffragettes in England. Their devotedness and services dur- 
ing the war. The necessary struggle. The rights of the man. 
The woman and the child forgotten. The good man is shy. 
Triumph of the women. The seaports and pleasure cities. 

I. At the Universities. Berkeley. Stanford 

In the Eastern states, people are beginning to discuss 
the question of coeducation for the tv^o sexes. In the 
West, it seems to have been definitely settled in the af- 
firmative. At Stanford University and at Berkeley, and 
afterward at Salt Lake City, in Colorado, Seattle and 
Chicago I spoke to mixed audiences of young men and girls 
of from eighteen to tv^enty, all remarkably attentive to 
my explanation of the new ideas. I spent an afternoon 
and an evening at Berkeley, where one of my principal 
university addresses was given, under the presidency of 
Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler ; and no one could wish to have 
a more intelligent, united and responsive audience. At 
Stanford, I spent the whole day with President David Starr 
Jordan, and the young men students invited me to visit 
their houses and dormitories. They are allowed to choose 
between two entirely different styles of living. Some of 
them, divided into groups of twenty or twenty-five, live 

55 



56 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

in small villas, where they are their own masters, under 
the management of one of their number, whom they elect 
president in virtue of his abihty and merit. They study, 
play outdoor games, practice athletic sports and sleep 
in the open air in all weathers. In the evening they meet 
in the parlor — of course with draughts still playing all 
round them — and devote themselves to music and various 
amusements. Others lead exactly the same life in a larger 
building, where they number several hundred, but are 
just as free as the others. 

It is the same with the girls. Groups of them have their 
houses and gardens, or their independent dormitory. 
The houses occupied by the girls and youths are close 
together and intermingled, and there is never a breath of 
scandal. The girls go about freely all day, and even at 
night, in the gardens and streets and on the playgrounds. 
They play games, ride (always astride) and gallop about 
bareheaded, just as they go on foot. They are not afraid 
of anything — neither the air, nor the cold, nor the heat, 
nor of any one looking at them. / 

The GirW Dinner. Voluntary Servants 

When I had finished my automobile drive in the neigh- 
borhood of the university and my three or four speeches, 
I received an invitation to dinner in one of the girls' pavil- 
ions. The girls were all dressed in their best, in white or 
pink, and it was delightful to see them looking so fresh, 
with their fair or dark hair, their blue or dark eyes, smiling 
and confident. 

In addition to the two Japanese students who waited 
on this gathering of youth and grace, there was, strange 
to say, a tall young man, very quiet and simple — an 
American, who was also serving. He was a student, 
working as a servant, in accordance with a custom which 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 57 

prevails all over the United States among young men 
whose means do not enable them to pay the expenses of 
their college course. It was done so simply and naturally 
that no one but a brute could have made facetious remarks 
about it in such a company or asked how such paradoxes 
were possible. From time to time during the meal the 
girls stopped talking, in obedience to an imperceptible 
sign from one of them, and without standing up, began to 
sing a part-song. It was either lively, sentimental or witty, 
but the lively element predominated. Then they stopped, 
the talk and laughter began again, and presently came an- 
other song. The dinner seemed a very short one to me. 

After that I went to see the young men^ to the number 
of several hundred, and made them a speech, amid frightful 
draughts. It was a pleasure to see their fresh and open 
countenances. All these young people have no thought 
of evil; but it will be all the more easy to deceive them 
and lead them astray, and how necessary it is to put them 
on their guard, not only against their own mistakes, but 
against those committed by governments ! I have often 
expressed such fears on leaving these young men and girls, 
abandoned, so to speak, as they were, to their own instincts. 
Finally, however, I began to wonder whether this kind of 
education is not the best of safeguards, and whether the 
use of Hberty is not the best form of precaution and dis- 
cipHne. 

Young Americans traveling in France 

It would be a mistake for our young Frenchmen to 
suppose that an American education is good only for the 
muscles and nerves and that, in all other respects, it simply 
produces innocents who cannot make their way outside 
of their own country. On the contrary, it turns out men 
who are at home anywhere. Here is one instance out of a 
thousand. I had returned to Paris and was leaving my 



58 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

house one day to go to the senate. It was on July 13, 
the day before the national festival. I was late, as usual, 
and while I was going downstairs, I ran into two tall young 
men dressed in gray flannel suits and so obviously American 
that I stopped, just as they did. They were two students 
from Stanford who had been present at my lectures and 
had come to call on me ; but they did not want to disturb 
me; they were touring in the simplest way on bicycles, 
and their vacation was nearly over. In spite of the dread- 
ful hurry I was in, and my consciousness that I was im- 
patiently awaited, I should have been glad to show my 
liking for these young men, but I had to confine myself 
to scribbling a few words on my card to help them see the 
review, and also jotting down my address in the Depart- 
ment of the Sarthe, with a few brief directions about the 
best way to go there. 

Three days afterwards they made their appearance at 
La Fleche as unconcernedly as if they had been my neigh- 
bors. They could not speak French, but they were so 
pleasant, natural and well-behaved that they found people 
willing to help them everywhere. More than this, they had 
managed to pass through the crowd and the lines of police 
at the review and get very good places, though they had 
no tickets. They saw the president of the republic and 
the ministers, the presentation of the colors and decora- 
tions; they vibrated to the strains of the "Marseillaise" 
and "Sambre et Meuse," and cheered the dirigible balloons. 
Every one made room for them. They found the way to 
the heart of France. 

At my house at Creans they were soon playing tennis, 
swimming and canoeing exactly as if they were at home. 
Every one was so dehghted with them that we would not 
hear of their going. More than this : as I had to attend 
a pubhc banquet in a neighboring village, they went with 
me, and, despite their ignorance of French, their mere 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 59 

individuality made them so popular that one of them had 
to make a speech which I translated, proposing the two 
sister republics: Washington and Lafayette. It was a 
delightful day for all, and afforded self-evident proof that 
products of an American education are quite suitable for 
export. 

I can say as much for a Pittsburgh girl who accompanied 
me and my children on a series of visits we made by 
automobile to several communes in my department. 
She indeed spoke French, but her graciousness and sim- 
pUcity were such that she was persona grata with 
every one, peasants and workmen alike. She became so 
popular that the village bandsmen came and formed in a 
circle around her to play her an ''aubade," or morning 
serenade, and asked her for prints of the photographs she 
had taken of the fete. 

It must be admitted that the young Americans who make 
up their minds to travel in Europe belong to the most 
sociable kind. They are even beginning to regret their 
ignorance — hitherto quite natural — of foreign languages. 
They are nevertheless in a position to see that their in- 
dependent style of education does not cut them off from 
other people, but rather brings them into closer communion. 
It is the same with many other points of difference, which, 
to the superficial observer, might be expected to act as so 
many causes of incompatibihty, instead of being, as they 
are in reality, connecting Hnks or sources of mutual 
influence and of friendship between the New World and 
the Old, and especially France. 

2. An Election Campaign. For or against Women 

The objection may be raised that I am too much pre- 
possessed in favor of the enviable progress achieved in 
the United States, but the fact is that, in that country, I 



6o AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

have been steeping myself in simplicity. Especially in 
the West, or rather the Far West, I have seen the down- 
fall of our old prejudices one after another, and the victory 
of natural conceptions over Old World traditions which 
would be senseless in the new hemisphere. I do not see 
why I should not admit that my travels have given me a 
second education. I could not help keeping my eyes and 
ears open. My travels, and in fact my Hfe, have been 
one long road to Damascus. I have been literally taken 
by storm and invaded by problems which prudence or 
routine would have preferred to see relegated to the back- 
ground. Against such assaults I struggled in vain. What 
was to be done, for instance, against a sudden and simul- 
taneous attack by all the women in CaHfornia? I was 
obliged to decide, all at once, whether I was on their side 
or hostile to them. What should I have said if any one 
had told me before I left France that I, a diplomatist, 
would not only carry on but actually open an electoral 
campaign in favor of votes for women at San Francisco? 
And yet that is what happened. I did not yield without 
resistance. I spoke my mind very freely. I was con- 
tradicted and questioned at several large meetings. I 
did not attempt to conceal that a conflict was going on 
between my natural sentiments and those created in me 
by my European education. This conflict lasted through- 
out the week I spent in California, without a moment's 
rest. Long-distance telephone calls, daily and nightly 
telegrams, messages, letters, visits and all kinds of efforts 
were used to induce me to intervene. 

In principle I had already given hostages to the cause, 
and this was known. The newspapers in many cities of 
the United States had published translations of an address 
I delivered in Paris on *' Women and the Cause of Peace." ^ 

^ See International Conciliation, Pamphlet No. 40, March, 191 1. 407 
W. 117, New York City. 



WOIVIAN IN THE UNITED STATES 6 1 

I have presided over a great number of the meetings 
of their national and international association. All 
efforts on behalf of the weak and all movements towards 
emancipation, assistance and social improvement belong 
to the great primordial struggle against violence. No one 
can advance the progress of the human race and at the 
same time contribute to enslaving and destroying it. It is 
all part of one whole. One must be for or against might, 
for or against right. Every feminist is inevitably a pacifist, 
and vice versa; and this is especially true in the United 
States and other new countries. The newer the com- 
munity, the higher the position given to women and chil- 
dren. Woman's status has improved with the march of 
civiHzation and the westward progress of the sun, and 
it has therefore reached its maximum of progress in the 
Far West of America, on the shore of the Pacific. This 
was the substance of the proposition I had put forward, 
and I could not refuse to uphold it at San Francisco, but 
I immediately perceived that it was too moderate. ''You 
are too easy to please," the American women told me; 
and they even added, "We decHne your certificate of 
felicity." This hard knock was administered to me by 
the woman president of one of the numerous meetings 
I was invited to attend. I responded frankly, being 
fortunately accustomed to pubUc meetings, by saying : 
''You are justified in asking for more, from your electoral 
point of view, but I am also justified in congratulating 
you, whether you like it or not, from my general point of 
view. You are entitled to complain; but, ladies, you are 
fortunate, free and highly favored. I am sorry to have 
told you so at an inopportune moment, but you are super- 
latively well off in comparison with the women of other 
countries. By all means agitate for further progress, so 
that those other women may profit by it. They have 
much more need of it than you have." I then went on to 



62 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

give some of my experiences as a traveler and to describe 
the life of women in eastern and southern Europe. Al- 
though all audiences Hke to be opposed, this one at first 
appeared disinchned to listen to my arguments. I had 
invited contradiction, and I obtained all I wanted. 

The Paris Boulevards 

One of the ladies present observed, somewhat acidly, 
that I must have brought my prejudices with me from 
France, considering that a French mother has not enough 
confidence in her daughter to let her go out alone in Paris. 
To this I replied by dehberately taking the part of the 
French mother, and adding that no mother or real friend 
of an American girl would let her go out alone in the even- 
ing on our boulevards, not on account of bad Frenchmen, 
but of the cosmopolitan crowds who go there to spend 
their money. 

Miserable Young Girls 

After this, I drew an only too faithful picture of the 
manner in which girls are exploited in all countries. I 
pointed out that they are defenseless, not only against law, 
but against custom, which urgently calls for alteration. 
In this way harmony was restored between my audience 
and myself, to such an extent that an old workman, who 
only knew me by the title of "Baron," lavishly used by 
the American newspapers in referring to me, shouted out : 

*' That's good ! I like to see an aristocrat who's human ! " 

The Three Husbands 

Although the ice was thus broken, my difficulties merely 
took another form just as the debate assumed a different 
tone. I mention it because it took place publicly and was 
reported at the time. One of the ladies took the floor 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 63 

and said : ''You must not judge us by appearances. The 
Frenchwoman is perhaps not so free as we are, but in 
reality she is happier." Why? "Because she is more 
esteemed by her husband. Our husbands and fathers 
give us all we can wish for, except their confidence. A 
French husband treats his wife as a friend and helper ; 
an American husband keeps his wife at a distance from 
his life. No doubt you know what we say here about a 
French couple and how we distinguish it from others. The 
English husband goes in front of his wife, the American 
wife goes in front of her husband, and the French husband 
and wife go side by side." 

It was a rather awkward novelty for me to have to dis- 
cuss such questions at a public meeting. I confined my- 
self to remarking that I knew a great many very united 
couples in America, and that, if there was a lack of confidence 
among others, it could not be made up for by any law. 
Such confidence, in fact, must be earned. To illustrate 
my meaning, I could find nothing better than to describe 
the inside of a French household — not the kind in which 
the wife copies her neighbor, who copies an Englishwoman 
who copies a fashion paper, but just one of those plain and 
unpretentious families of which I know thousands in France. 

3. The French Woman. A French Wife 

Let us, I said, in substance, avoid generalizations ; there 
are ill-assorted couples everywhere, both in France and in 
America, but I am quite wilKng, ladies, to admit that the 
Frenchwoman does not complain, does not ask for a vote, 
and seems more satisfied with her lot than you are. A 
French family, especially of the kind that exists in circles 
unknown to travelers, is the ideal form of association 
between man and woman, and is a triumph for the latter, 
because it is her work. But it is a work requiring great 



64 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and inherited patience. It is a conquest of the husband's 
authority — a conquest for which the way is paved by the 
wife's education, spirit of continuity and abnegation. The 
masterpiece of the whole achievement is that the marital 
authority remains intact, but it is never exercised without a 
check. The wife respects it, and supports it whenever nec- 
essary, but never ceases to enhghten it with maternal care. 
Many a time have I stopped to study one of these model 
families, in my native department, the Sarthe, whenever 
I happened to find one on my path, in some small town 
or on a farm. Here indeed does the wife reign, or rather 
the husband reigns while the wife watches. The man 
gives the orders but the woman suggests them. She 
retires into the background and devotes herself to the 
humble needs of the household. The constantly recurring 
duties which are not worth mentioning individually, but 
are indispensable items in the daily life of the household, 
are her care. She discharges them unawares, as if by the 
operation of the Holy Ghost. The husband — a cattle 
dealer, let us say — goes off in his cart before daybreak 
to see farmers or make purchases at a fair. His wife, up 
before him, lights the fire and prepares breakfast without 
any fuss. She rouses the stableman or herself gives the 
horse his oats. She brushes her husband's clothes and 
shoes and, if need be, helps him to harness the horse. As 
soon as he has gone, she tidies the bedroom, the kitchen 
and the house in general and sees to the farmyard, the 
poultry yard, the cowhouse and the stable. She dresses 
the children, gives them their breakfast and sends them 
off to school. She mends, washes and irons the linen, 
not without conversation, for she is by no means of a grumpy 
disposition, and her husband will not be averse to hearing 
the village news when he comes home. Between whiles 
she kills a chicken or duck, plucks it and trusses it for next 
Sunday's dinner. She kneads the bread, heats the oven. 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 65 

prepares a cake or gives her orders to the baker. She 
makes her purchases from the grocer and butcher. She 
attends to the cellar, too, and she it is who goes down to 
fetch the bottle of good white wine that the master wants 
to open for the benefit of a customer or of the friend whom 
he brings home. She it is, clean, calm and smihng, who 
receives us and entertains us when I come with my friends. 
She attends to everything, without appearing to do so. 
She keeps the accounts, too, and the most extraordinary 
part of it is that some of these wives, to my knowledge, 
can hardly read ; but they are never a centime out when 
it comes to calculating what she has to take from Peter 
and give to Paul, advance to Louis and deduct from 
Charles's account and so on. 

It often happens that when the husband comes back 
from market, he is not in a very good temper, and then, of 
course, his wife has to bear the brunt. "It's your fault," 
he will tell her; "you forgot this, you told me that, your 
idea was all wrong, and so on I" The wife responds in 
her own way and according to circumstances. If there 
are any witnesses, she holds her tongue. She is politic, 
like Louis XI, and dissimulates, or else she makes jokes 
and takes nothing to heart. She has heard worse things, 
and so have her mother and her grandmother before her ! 
She laughs heartily or else she furtively wipes away a tear. 
It depends on her temperament or the circumstances. Some- 
times her husband has had hard work to induce a customer 
to make up his mind, and has had to drink a glass or two 
of wine, or perhaps a glass too many. She sizes up the 
situation at a glance, says nothing and waits till next day ; 
or, if she is alone, she gives her husband a piece of her 
mind, in which case there is no knowing what takes place. 

In any event, next day there can be no doubt about her 
being mistress in her own house, as she was before, and 
her husband, though he may growl and grumble, internally 



66 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

admits that she is right. She is his adviser, his friend and 
his better half. What would be the use of trying to sub- 
stitute a political right for the conjugal authority thus 
exercised by the Frenchwoman? Is it surprising that she 
does not ask for legislation? 

In the same way, the right to vote is never claimed so 
much by the favored few as by the others. For them is 
it required^ and for this reason is it sacred. If we contrast 
the satisfied condition of the happy wife with the sufferings 
of the wretched women who are victimized by the present 
condition of affairs, the point of view alters, and I have 
never had the heart to discourage the American women 
who plead the cause of their kind. 

4. Votes for Women. The Suffragettes. Their Devotedness 
and Services during the War 

My Liberal friends in England have, in my opinion, 
committed a very great mistake in opposing the suffragettes, 
whatever may have been the violence against which they 
have often had to defend themselves. Departing, in an 
inexplicable manner, from all traditions of English pubHc 
life, they have refused to concede the right of women to 
discuss their claims, and have treated these claims with 
disdain. If they had given them only a small part of the 
consideration lavished, by all parties in all countries, on 
the least respectable sections of the electorate, they would 
have placed themselves in the most favorable position and 
would not have committed such a monstrosity as to put 
woman — in England, of all countries ! — in what may 
be called the lower scale of humanity and drive her to 
the excesses which have been too often committed.^ 

^ Let us not fail to note as one more argument in favor of votes for women, 
the patriotic devotion, the public spirit of which they are giving evidence 
during the European war of 19 14-15. The women had already shown 
what immense service they could perform in the vast domain of municipal 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 67 

No party in the United States has perpetrated such a 
blunder as that of the Liberals in England. Even President 
Roosevelt, who believes in vigorous methods, has not pro- 
nounced against feminism. He, at first, avoided com- 
mitting himself and took refuge in a sympathy which 
he has himself described as *' lukewarm." He became 
much more decided later on. Whether their own sym- 
pathy be ardent or tepid, the public authorities cannot 
elude the question of votes for women much longer. It 
is an integral part of a great social, national and universal 

administration, in charities, in teaching, in hygiene, the improvement of 
morals, justice, etc. We shall many times bear such testimony in the 
course of this book, but one domain had always, so it seemed, been closed 
to them, that of war. Jeanne d'Arc, it had seemed, was to remain almost 
the single exception in history. The EngUsh suffragettes have recently 
responded most nobly to this last appeal. Although following pacific 
lines, they have understood that it was their duty to combat, in accordance 
with their means and their strength, for the rights of the most feeble, and 
for peace, against the aggression of German militarism. They did not 
stop with exhortations to their sons, brothers, husbands and fiances to take 
arms. They have themselves enlisted and are actively participating in 
auxihary service of the army, the post ofiice, the telephone, telegraph; in 
administration, acting as interpreters, as members of Boards of Health, 
etc. None can any longer find anything ridiculous about their activities, 
now that these will leave free thousands of soldiers and officers to go to the 
front, while women will take their places in the offices or even on the firing 
Une. Suffragettes at war ! yet surrounded by the respect and receiving the 
gratitude of a nation. Who could have predicted this miracle? — but it is 
nevertheless quite natural. Here in France we have seen sociahsts and anti- 
militarists sacrificing everything without hesitation for the defense of the 
country and of peace. This war must be furnishing to the women of all 
countries — not excluding those of Germany — an opportunity to justify 
their right in doing duty hke the men. They have been everywhere collabo- 
rators, indispensable in the service of health. Many admirable women have 
hastened to Europe, both from America and from Japan. They were not 
satisfied to bring over here mere material assistance, however valuable, in 
money or in supphes. They are spending that which is still more precious, 
their very selves. One must see them on the field of battle as intrepid as 
the bravest soldiers; one must see them in the hospitals and in the model 
ambulances which they have prepared and the service of which they direct. 
This war must be adding an irresistible force to the propaganda of women 
for righteousness and for peace. (March, 191 5.) 



68 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

problem, which has been laid before the United States 
and is being solved in sections, by partial successes which 
will end in a general triumph. That this would be the 
case was my impression after my first journeys in America, 
and it was confirmed after my visits to the Scandinavian 
countries, where ideas germinate earher than elsewhere; 
but I now regard it as a certainty. My experiences at 
San Francisco were merely a prelude to the initiation that 
awaited me later on, in state after state, when I was able 
to estimate what had been attempted and accomplished 
by women in the United States. It is not that the American 
woman is superior to others, but she is freer. She is as 
brave as others, but her bravery shows itself in pubhc, 
for the good of the cause, while the European woman, 
who is more resigned, is brave only in suffering. 

The Necessary Struggle 

People laugh at the woman who claims the right to vote. 
She is ridiculed, just as ridicule has been heaped upon 
advocates of the noblest causes, at all forerunners, inventors 
and pioneers, but in the long run she will be respected in 
proportion to the extent to which people feel ashamed of 
having made fun of her. I have heard the most frivolous 
society women admire the grandeur of an immense pro- 
cession that went past their windows in New York. It was 
a women's demonstration, carried out on a winter day, 
amid rain and mud. Thousands and thousands of women, 
of all ages, all classes and all kinds, marched past, without 
distinction of place, forgetful of the times in which they 
lived, of their inequaUties of station, of their joys and 
sorrows, their minds fixed upon a common purpose — the 
emancipation of their sex and the right to act, compete, 
protest and vote in public as well as in private. There 
were tears in the eyes of the women who described this 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 69 

scene to me. Perhaps it was an awakening for them. 
They admired the courage that must have been necessary 
for the philanthropic women whom they saw at the head 
of the procession — women who exposed themselves not 
only to ridicule from the spectators, but to contact with 
unfortunates of the lowest type, and also with the female 
cranks who spoil the best causes by their excessive zeal. 
I discussed the matter with mothers whose families I 
knew to be united and to enjoy general esteem. I explained 
my doubts, fears and prejudices, without exciting any sur- 
prise, and their reply was : 

''We shall win because we must win! You have wit- 
nessed the fight for the parliamentary vote in CaUfornia. 
That was only a single stage of the struggle. We have 
been successful in many other very important preliminary 
attacks. In the state of Kansas, for instance, women 
take part in all municipal elections, both as electors and 
candidates, and every one, especially the taxpayer, is 
delighted with this moralizing progress. A great many 
women are at the head of municipalities and are not only 
excellent mothers but excellent mayors. 

"In nearly half the United States we have the education 
vote; that is to say, the mothers as well as the fathers 
elect the school officials, the members of the library com- 
mittees, etc., and nobody complains; quite the reverse. 
In some states a woman, and even a young one, has been 
elected to the post of school superintendent. We have 
obtained the right to vote for or against certain kinds of 
expenditure and public works, so as to make sure that the 
outlay will be really useful and not for the sole benefit of 
the contractors and their friends. 

"Moreover, the progress of our cause should not be judged 
solely by these results, brilliant as they are. Our means of 
action, our resources, our numbers, our organization and 
the splendid men and women who support us and lead us 



70 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

must be taken into account. Our history also should not 
be ignored. 

The Rights of the Man. The Woman and the Child 

Forgotten 

^'Our objection to the narrow interpretation of the 
Declaration of the Rights of Man is of no recent date. 
We claim that it should be applied, not merely in the 
letter, but in the purely humane spirit in which it is con- 
ceived, both to women and children. We tried our strength 
in the negro emancipation question. Our success proved 
our legal inferiority to be a paradox that could not be 
entertained. Our assistance was accepted, but when 
the fight was over, the right to vote was denied us. Slaves 
were freed but women were not. We were put in the 
same class with criminals and madmen. We were obHged 
to go about with the placards you have seen : ' Criminals, 
the insane and women do not vote.' 

''We have succeeded admirably in municipal affairs 
(not to mention the active part played by women in cham- 
bers of commerce and agriculture), and why, and by what 
right, should we stop there? 

"If you admit that the interest of all the inhabitants 
of a city is to unite in preventing, for instance, the adul- 
teration of milk, sugar and other foods on which our 
children are fed, how are you to hinder us when we are 
organized, as we soon shall be, from stopping the moral 
adulteration of education and national truth? How will 
you prevent us from uniting against the lies, abuses and 
corruption that men support or encourage because of profit 
to themselves or because they are afraid to denounce 
them? We are numerous, and we constitute a force that 
has been often employed. It is not enough for us to exer- 
cise influence ; we must resort to direct action. 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 7 1 

*'We have held aloof too long through timidity and 
because we were convinced of our own incapacity and of 
your alleged superiority in the domain of public affairs. 
We have now been aroused from this over-long dream, 
devoid of pride and ambition, by realities and facts. In 
man's own interest, it is time to deprive him of his monopoly 
of management, which is quite as bad for him as it is for 
us and for civilization. 



The Good Man is Shy 

'' The best men are really more timid than women. They 
are afraid of the yellow newspapers, of scandal, of black- 
mail, of innovations and of truth, and finally their weakness 
spells predominance for gangs of the worst kind. The 
Press, poHticians and business men would end by dominat- 
ing all honest people if it were not for us. Because we do 
not want to come out of our homes, are we to abandon 
them to the very men who would destroy them ? Never ! 
It was for love of our home, our children, our families, our 
country, of liberty and of justice that we entered the fight, 
and in their cause we shall triumph. 

^'But this triumph can only come through our obtaining 
the right to vote, and this will take a great deal less time 
than converting politicians. Once at the head of the polls, 
we shall compel the men to do, both for the country and 
the city, what they have hitherto failed to do. 

"As for our homes, you need be under no uneasiness. 
They will be all the better protected when we can guard 
them both outside and inside. We have stayed indoors 
so long, and so many things have been taken from us, that 
we must needs go out to retake them. Our position as 
wives and mothers is threatened if it carries with it no 
right of control, and this right of control is nothing without 
our right of interference." 



72 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

To sum up, the movement in favor of votes for women 
is a protest of outraged morality against the mascuUne 
infringements of politics on private Hfe, conscience and 
individual liberty. This protest, which is sometimes 
negative, is directed with incredible violence against drink, 
for instance, as we shall see later on At other times it 
takes a positive form on behalf of the public health, open 
spaces, children's sports and education, the regulation of 
labor and the protection of childhood. It can no longer 
be treated with contempt. Governments must take it 
into account, even in Europe. I certainly did not expect 
to take part in the campaign carried on by the ladies of 
San Francisco. I am delighted to bear my share of re- 
sponsibility for their triumph : for, as every one knows, they 
eventually won. 

Triumph of the Women 

They now have the right to elect and be elected at the 
next parliamentary election in the state of California. 
There are now eleven states which have become feminist 
as the result of constitutional changes adopted by the 
electorate. A surprise vote temporarily deprived the 
state of Washington of this new right, but it was soon 
regained. Even New York state itself is perceptibly 
wavering. In 1912, six states — California, Utah, Wyo- 
ming, Idaho, Colorado and Washington — had been won 
over to the principle of votes for women ; the last five 
being among the least populous states in the Union. The 
conquest of California, whose population exceeded that 
of all the others put together, resulted, in the following 
year, in the conversion of five other states, — Montana, 
Kansas, Arizona, Oregon and Michigan, — making eleven 
in all, or more than a fifth of the whole country.^ 

^ To these eleven states and the territory already conquered by the 
women at the end of 1913, in order to be exact, one must add twelve stater 



WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES 73 

Seaports and Pleasure Cities 

Here is another remarkable fact. The "gay" cities, 
and especially the large seaports, are, of course, hostile to 
any reform directed towards protection of women. Such 
dreams are not for the patrons of bars, saloons and low 
houses. San Francisco consequently voted dead against 
the change, and so large was the pluraHty that, on the 
night of the election, the defeat of the cause seemed certain 
and was announced beforehand in telegrams sent all over 
the country. It was made the subject of ironical com- 
ments in next morning's newspapers, but on the following 
day the returns from the rural constituencies outweighed 
those of the capital and the rout became a victory. The 
moral will not be lost sight of : the communities in which 
woman is submerged are hostile to her uplifting, but the 
country districts, where she is mistress of the farm or 
household, are in her favor. 

I have set down faithfully how I took part, all unpre- 
pared, in this great movement. Did I thereby depart 
from my path? Certainly not; I widened it. I met 
with new assistance and did not neglect it. Such numerous 
protests carry weight, and such willing helpers end by 
forming a powerful union of common interests which will 

in which universal suffrage has been voted by both chambers of the legis- 
latures, awaiting only constitutional ratification. Seven states have granted 
the right to vote on school matters alone, three have granted "school and 
taxpaying suffrage"; two states have granted only "taxpaying suffrage." 
Fifteen states in 19 13 refused the suffrage, but since then there has been 
further progress. See among the numerous suffrage pubhcations in the 
United States the "Women's Journal and Suffrage News" of Boston, founded 
by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, a weekly journal which has already 
been pubUshed forty- seven years. 

The example of the United States has induced rapid changes in the entire 
world, beginning with the great colonies of England and extending even to 
France. See the very interesting reports made by M. Ferdinand Buisson, 
Deputy to the French Parliament, and especially that of July 29, 1913. 
(March, 1915.) 



74 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

be bound together by the force of circumstances. Gov- 
ernments began by denying the strength of public opinion 
and then braved it. They are now making up their minds 
to recognize it whenever it is awakened and makes its 
voice heard. They had better take care. Under the 
system of armed peace they have created an accumulation 
of dissatisfaction against themselves. It is coming from 
men of intellect, from the working classes and from a 
large section of business men. If the governments add 
women to the list, they will make themselves very un- 
popular indeed. 

Women have supported me, and I now support them. 
Being the weaker sex, they are even more interested than 
men in the maintenance of peace and the organization of 
justice. Whenever the fishers in troubled waters are 
trying to stir up war or panic, the influence of women ought 
to turn the scale. This struck me with especial force at 
San Francisco, where the wonderful progress of a rich 
country only too often runs the risk of being spoiled by the 
schemes of a handful of adventurers, and especially by the 
threat of a so-called 'inevitable" war between the United 
States and Japan, the inanity of which I shall discuss in 
another chapter. In case of a danger really national, on 
the contrary, as I have said above, the women are the 
first to set an example of heroism and to contribute to the 
defense of the country. 



CHAPTER V 

FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 

I. A New City. Seattle. The moving houses. The Seattle 
spirit. The "single tax." Henry George. The churches. — 
2. The Seattle Exhibition. Past and future. Far West to Far 
East. From the Arctic circles to the Tropics. — 3. Seattle's Am- 
bition. The railways. New ideals ; the French revolution. 
The products follow the ideas. Bad management ; deforestation ; 
American waste. American organization. The states of Wash- 
ington and Oregon. Culture and gathering of the apples. If 
only France knew ! — 4. Portland. The Sacramento. The gold 
seekers. The Rose city. The automatic telephone. The Colum- 
bia River. The gold. The progress of agriculture. — 5. Dry 
Farming. The Mormons. Illegal but existing polygamy. 

I. A New City. Seattle 

I AM now at the most northerly point of my journey in 
the West. As every one knows, Seattle — which dates 
from yesterday, or, to be exact, from sixty years ago — is 
already a very large city laid out on a vast scale like the 
others, and even more so. The population, about a thou- 
sand in 1870, will soon total 300,000. Here again the 
Americans have prepared for the future on spacious lines. 
It must be admitted that Nature seems to have decided 
the proportions of these big towns. The Greek and 
Roman metropolitan cities are large in proportion to their 
surroundings, and this harmony constitutes their beauty; 
American cities of the twentieth century cannot be on these 
lines. They are gigantic, like the country, the mountains, 
the trees, the gulfs, the rivers. It is surprising that the men 
themselves are not bigger. 

75 



76 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The celebrated Douglas fir trees, which are beginnmg to 
yield to the progress of civilization, are several yards in 
diameter and are several thousand years old (6500 years, 
it is said) . The pillars of a temple, built for the forestry ex- 
hibition at the Seattle Exposition, and still standing, were 
made out of enormous tree trunks, all identical and each in 
a single piece, larger than any monolith or stone obelisk. 

From San Francisco to Portland, and from Portland to 
Alaska and the Rocky Mountains, everything is big; 
how could Seattle be small? Such an enterprise could not 
have been carried out without a great amount of money 
and a still greater amount of confidence and assurance. 
Not only has the forest been cleared away, but even the 
mountains are being leveled. From the thirteenth floor of 
my hotel I can see line after line of hills interspersed with 
lakes and gulfs. These hills are partially cleared of forest 
and are already dotted here and there with houses. Build- 
ing lots are marked out among new streets that have been 
carried up the steepest slopes, paved and provided with 
sidewalks. In a few months these streets will be lined with 
houses. They are already served by busy, restless tram- 
ways, with their surprising contempt for gradients and un- 
inhabited localities ; and they are lighted, after the Seattle 
style, with an abundance of five-branch electric standards 
worthy of the Avenue de T Opera in Paris. 

The Moving Houses 

In certain places, notably near the New Washington 
Hotel, the gradient was really too much even for the Seattle 
tramways ; but no time was lost in hesitating, and the hill 
was simply decapitated. It is now being treated just as 
one might take off the upper half of a cottage loaf. This 
gets rid of a hill about three hundred feet high and provides 
a comparatively level roadway. This bold operation, how- 



FEOM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 77 

ever, was not foreseen, and some of the inhabitants had 
established their homes on the top of the hill, whence they 
enjoyed a splendid view over the gulf and lakes. The 
existence of these houses was a mere detail. They were 
simply moved down. Like another Macbeth, I have seen 
these houses come down the hill, and they are moving as I 
watch. I have to go and satisfy myself that I am not under 
some optical illusion. Most of these pretty houses are built 
of wood, but brick and even stone houses, as we shall see 
later, are successfully moved in the same way. The wooden 
houses are comparatively large, the most spacious containing 
at least ten rooms. Being perched on the hillside (which 
in the meantime is being attacked night and day by boring 
machines, the earth being conveyed elsewhere by a series 
of railways), they may be said to be ready for traveling. 
The foundations which rest on a square of logs are soon laid 
bare, and are replaced by a square framework of lumber, 
under which two immense wooden beams, pointing downhill 
like an enormous chariot, are slipped, a sort of bridge or 
inclined plane leading downhill having been previously 
made. Piles of roughly hewn logs are placed, one above 
the other, Uke a child's building blocks, their number being 
smaller and smaller as the inclined plane, to which they act 
as supports, comes nearer the level of the new site, where 
everything is made ready for the house. Down this rudi- 
mentary bridge, which looks as if it had been designed 
by a child, the two beams, and the house with them, are 
gently lowered by means of a clever combination of ropes, 
until the house has reached the plot that is waiting for it. 
Strong wheels are then fitted to the beams, and the house is 
steered to the exact spot desired and is ready for occupation. 
I had a conversation with the owner of one of these 
houses while she was putting the finishing touches to a 
small garden in front of her veranda in its new place. 
My surprise, or rather my astonishment, seemed to amuse 



78 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

her, and she was kind enough to tell me all I wanted to 
know about her removal. '^ Nothing could be simpler," 
she said. '^ Everything inside the house was left as it was. 
The furniture, fixtures, pictures, and so on, all stayed in 
their places. We did not even have a window-pane 
broken." It was perfectly true, and I have seen at Seattle, 
at Minneapolis, St. Paul and Buffalo, other houses 
moved in the same way, with their windows intact and the 
curtains in their place just as if nothing unusual were 
going on. The lady's satisfaction, however, was not alto- 
gether unalloyed, inasmuch as, according to what she told 
me, the moving cost her $25,000, including everything. I 
asked if she could not have had a new house built for 
the same cost, to which she replied, philosophically: 
''Probably." 

The contractor, whom I found at his works, was more 
optimistic. He pointed out that, by letting one of these 
transplanted houses for five or six years, the owner gets 
back the cost of moving it. In the meantime the land 
increases in value and the house can be rebuilt for a 
permanency. 

The Seattle Spirit 

None the less, shaving off the top of a hill and 
moving the ground, with the houses on it, into the 
valley — an operation known as "degrading" — is an 
uncommon exploit, except at Seattle, where extraordinary 
things are the rule and where the principal object is to 
accomplish the impossible. People talk about the '' Seattle 
spirit," ''what Seattle wants" and the ''Seattle walk," 
and there is some truth in it. I have met many Americans 
with a " sure- to-get- there " style of walking, just like their 
conversation. 

This self-confidence has already shown what it can do. It 
was what led the citizens of Seattle to discuss plans for 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 79 

laying out the city on a larger scale while the terrible fire 
in 1889 was still raging. Thanks also to this spirit, they 
compelled the railway companies to pay attention to their 
district, which was thought of very little account at that 
time. The companies refused to establish their terminals 
in such a chaos of mountains and lakes. They set down 
the idea as impossible and crazy. Not to be discouraged, 
the Seattle men set to work themselves in gangs and, with- 
out any outside help, they built the most difficult section 
of the line, starting from Seattle, ready to connect with 
the future trunk line. Since that time Seattle, together 
with the two other northwestern ports, Portland and 
Tacoma, has become a center for all the transcontinental 
railroads. At present there are six ; there will soon be eight, 
and, no doubt, others later on. In this way a great center 
for trade with the Far East has been built up. It is easy 
to understand why Seattle absolutely refuses to join in 
any so-called patriotic movement against Japan. Seattle 
has shortened the journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
and Japan by two days, owing to the curvature of the 
earth's surface. In connection with the surrounding 
ports, such as Tacoma, Everett, Victoria, Vancouver and 
Portland, Seattle has become the great supply center for 
Alaska and British Columbia. A great many people work 
in the Klondike during the summer and return to Seattle 
for the winter. 

Prophets of ill omen predict all sorts of failures and dis- 
appointments for too-ambitious Seattle ; but the bolder 
spirits reply : 

*'What does that matter? We can stand disappoint- 
ments. We are not working for ourselves alone, but for the 
city, for the country and the future. Nothing venture, 
nothing win ; if we have setbacks, we will begin again, and 
if we still fail, others will get the benefit of what we have 
done. Nothing is lost. It makes no difference when the 



8o AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Panama Canal is finished or how fast the cities competing 
with us grow. The port of Seattle is in the middle of such 
a rich district that it is bound to take its place not only as 
a connecting link between East and W^st, but as a market 
for produce. This is why so much Eastern money is in- 
vested here, and why the rise in value of real estate justifies 
us in spending lavishly with an eye to the future. Lake 
Washington, which is deep enough for the biggest fleets 
in the world, will soon be connected through the city with 
the Sound ; we will begin to get coal out of our mines, we 
will have our own steel works and our crops will give ten 
times as much as they do now. 

The ^^ Single Tax^^ 

*' Capital from outside works with an absolute certitude 
at Seattle, and it has come to such a point with us that the 
question of property presents itself in a new light. Henry 
George's theories have a good many believers here, and it is 
easy to understand why. Look at this piece of real estate. 
Ten years ago it was worth nothing, and now it would sell 
for a million dollars. Its owner is simply waiting while 
the city works for his benefit. He lives in Chicago or 
New York and does nothing. He is speculating on other 
men's labor. Is this right or just? The same question 
has arisen at Vancouver, and it has been settled, not by 
SociaKsm but by what is called the ''single tax," based on 
the value of the ground, according to Henry George's 
system. Land should bring in revenue for the community 
and not for the owner alone. 

"You, gentlemen from Europe and the East, you will 
have to understand that we cannot live by your ways of 
settling things, and that we must find our own. Do not 
try to measure us by your standards. We are different 
from you, through the force of circumstances and through 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 8 1 

your own fault. Civilization has always moved westward 
with the sun, and now it has reached the end of the jour- 
ney, where we are. On us lies the burden of all your 
disappointments and excesses, as also of whatever good 
you have done. We have to deal with all the problems 
you have not been able to solve. At least let us view 
the task through our own eyes and take it in hand in our 
own way. We are a new people in a new sphere, and we 
have to find out new ways — our own ways; not yours." 

The Churches 

Thus, it will be seen, the Seattle spirit does not accept 
European ideas without due examination. The Seattle 
spirit takes nothing for granted. It shows itself in every 
department of Hfe ; in the churches, for instance, where my 
lectures were organized to perfection. I shall refer later on 
to the Presbyterian church, and I must also express my 
gratitude to the Congregational church, the most demo- 
cratic of all and also the oldest. It is under no bishop and 
is not connected with any organized church system. Its 
congregation consists of people who combined to build 
their own church and manage it after their own way, without 
any interference from outside or above. As the number of 
churches increases, they combine in turn. The members 
of the congregation elect their minister, and very good 
choices they make. They organize their Sunday school, 
their concerts and their meetings — in fact, every form 
of their intense activity. 

This, moreover, is how a great many Protestant churches 
in America regard their educational mission. They are 
open to moral instruction of any kind. The teaching of 
conciUation and international justice is by no means outside 
their program, but, on the contrary, forms part of it. There 
are a great many who think that the schools ought to be 



82 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

used for purposes of general instruction, outside school 
hours. Their theory is that the schools belong to the 
people, and that the people ought to have the use of them. 

2. The Seattle Exhibition. Past and Future 

The Washington State University considers it an honor 
to give object lessons and practical assistance to the city 
of Seattle. The one helps the other. I was unable to 
talk as long as I could have wished with the devoted and 
distinguished men who founded this university, and es- 
pecially with its chancellor and professor, Edmond S. 
Meany, one of the good genii who are constantly exalting 
and stimulating the Seattle spirit, which he defined as 
"disinterested civic cooperation." To see and do all I 
wanted, I should have had to stay months in each one of 
the cities I was visiting, and I was obliged to confine myself 
to a rapid inspection, with the assistance of reliable 
guides. I must not omit, however, to mention the 1909 
Exhibition, the remembrance and the traces of which were 
still very evident. It was organized by the university and 
in the university, on the finest site that could possibly be 
imagined, overlooking the panorama formed by the city, 
its hills, valleys, lakes, gulfs and sheets of water. The 
site itself, and the information given me by the organizers, 
showed me clearly enough why the exhibition was a success. 
None the less it was really a paradox, if not a folly. To 
undertake an international exhibition at the furthest 
extremity of the United States, and in such a distant and 
thinly populated district, must haye looked like a defiance 
of common sense and a certain failure. Not at all ; it 
was an excellent operation from every point of view — a 
master stroke, in fact. It was a means of making a 
center out of a place on the edge of the continent. It 
was, first of all, a center between the future and the past, 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 83 

which is always a matter of great interest here. Seattle is 
a thing of yesterday, but is all the more anxious to keep 
up the connection with its origin. The exhibition was a 
tribute to explorers and navigators in general, to Cook, 
to Drake, to Spain in the heroic epoch of Charles V and 
Philip II, to the England of Elizabeth, and to the Russia 
of Peter the Great, not forgetting the French explorers whose 
names are commemorated in Mount La Perouse, Mount 
Crillon and the new city of Juneau, built in 1880 by a 
nephew of the founder of Milwaukee. Having thus shown 
Seattle's right to its heraldic quarterings, I will add that 
Seattle has to be a center, not merely in time, but in space, 
both abstract and practical — a center of economic, political, 
intellectual and social activity. For these reasons, Seattle 
took care not to give its name to the exhibition, but adorned 
it with a title which signified a great deal more than the name 
of any one city, however great, could give; namely, the 
" Alaska- Yukon-Pacific Exhibition." Behold, then, Seattle 
as the capital of the Pacific coast, extending from the Arctic 
circle to the Tropics! Behold her a connecting link be- 
tween the Far North and the Far South ! as she is between 
the Far East and the West, which last has become Orien- 
tal in relation to Seattle. Behind Seattle the world dis- 
solves in dawn. The sun does not set, it rises at Seattle. 

Far West to Far East. From the Arctic Circles to the Tropics 

By means of its exhibition Seattle placed itself, politically 
speaking, on the great international highroad. It ceased 
to be an isolated point ; it became a junction, a post of 
honor, a terminal open towards all four of the principal 
points of the compass. The Pacific and Atlantic coasts 
might almost be said to meet on its territory and complete 
a circle from which American unity will expand. Why, 
however, should this circle be closed at Seattle instead of 



84 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

very much farther on? Why should not the Yukon, 
Alaska and other regions still newer than Seattle be brought 
into it ? When this is done, Seattle will become, in its turn, 
a sort of elder sister showing the way to younger communi- 
ties. At present a colony, it will rise to the rank of a me- 
tropolis and have its own markets, its own purposes and a 
clientele which will give it more influence in the councils 
of the United States, where the new territories, generally 
the best equipped and the most advanced, are naturally 
those that command the greatest amount of attention. 
We may therefore expect to see the territories of Alaska 
transformed one of these days into states, with capitols, 
parliaments, governors and supreme courts. Nothing 
is more probable. It was only in 1870 that the United 
States bought from Russia this peninsula five or six times 
as large as France for 37,000,000 francs, scarcely a third of 
what the gold mines of Alaska alone now yield annually. 
In ten years the general production of Alaska has reached 
a total of $300,000,000. Commerce, formerly Hmited to 
the fur products and seal fisheries, has risen from almost 
nothing to $150,000,000 in 1909 with the United States. 
Gold, in Alaska as in California, has ceased to be the principal 
source of wealth ; metals of all sorts are abundant, along 
with coal, woods suitable for building, and cereals, in a 
disconcerting climate where the snow forever seems to 
cover the land, but where the long days of summer with their 
eighteen hours of sunshine hasten the maturing of the crops. 
It is a new fountain of youth for humanity ; and to think 
that people talk of the exhaustion of the earth and of the 
decadence of our time ! I understood the energy of the 
inhabitants of Seattle better after the surprise of Alaska. 
It is in them, to be sure, but it is multiplied by the enthu- 
siasm of enterprises opened to the competition of superior 
activity in these virgin countries, sources of physical and 
moral sanity where human vigor is increased tenfold. 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 85 

The best is sure to succeed there. There also, more than 
anywhere else, will signifies success. Nothing is more 
natural as a consequence than to see these wills, 
which have triumphed over such great obstacles, con- 
tinue to dominate the resistance and the routine of the 
rest of the country. New York has succumbed to the 
influence of Chicago, which is now influenced by Seattle, 
and that city, as it grows older, will come under the in- 
fluence of another. This is all in the regular order of 
things. The colonial enterprises of our time are so many 
renovations of the world of to-day, including the United 
States, just as the discovery of the New World was a 
renovation for the Old. 



3. Seattle's Ambition. The Railways 

The first railroad which connected the Atlantic and 
Pacific, in 1869, not only put new life into the United States, 
but transformed their unity, previously a mere phrase, into 
a reahty. First of all came the old Central and Union 
Pacific line and then the Northern Pacific in 1883. After 
this, the Great Northern was extended as far as Seattle in 
1893. I shall deal with the Great Northern later on when 
I come to its founder, James J. Hill, at St. Paul. Popula- 
tion and produce increased, as if by magic, to show that 
these new railroads were needed, and to demand others. 
In my ignorance I had imagined that all this country was 
left desolate. As a matter of fact, it is already exporting 
a variety of produce, specimens of which have been shown 
me, ranging from miraculous drafts of salmon and other 
fish, game, canned provisions, furs (seal, bear, blue fox, 
beaver, goat and muskrat skins) and gold, to agri- 
cultural produce of the most European kind, and even to 
fruit like the kinds grown in Europe. The total value 
of all this produce has already reached an immense figure. 



86 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The traffic of the ports on the Pacific coast has increased 
by 102I per cent in fifteen years, and the exports from 
Seattle and Tacoma alone have risen from three million 
to seventy million dollars. Seattle even exports southern 
as well as northern produce, including an enormous quan- 
tity of cotton. All this is so obviously the outcome of 
human enterprise that the people of Seattle can hardly be 
prevented from planning out their future on the lines of 
their past, short as it is, and from shrugging their shoulders 
at the timidity born of our too long experience. 

New Ideals. The French Revolution 

How can there be any limit to the ambition of a people 
whose enterprises have already proved so successful? 
We can readily understand that they are not content with 
exercising merely a business influence, and that they want 
to help to give the whole nation, if not the world, new 
ideals and a new policy. We may smile skeptically, but 
the fact is that youth, imagination, inventiveness and 
genius meet with encouragement in these new countries, 
instead of mockery and opposition. There is a demand, 
as they say here, for initiative. Every effort made by these 
new cities leads to providing some additional resource for 
the Old World, and we European producers and inventors 
are dependent on these bold pioneers, who are bound to 
become our customers in the fullest sense of the term. I 
have not yet mentioned how the arguments (which I have 
already summarized) in favor of Henry George's theories 
were put forward in my presence, or how enthusiastically 
they were urged. I was alone in a railway car when two 
Americans came and sat down beside me, one after the 
other, and began a conversation. The first, a man between 
twenty-five and thirty years of age, with a frank and open 
expression, had attended some of my lectures. He was a 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 87 

drummer in the flour trade, and wanted to take the oppor- 
tunity of thanking me. He told me about his journeys in 
Alaska, like a thorough business man, and finished with a 
remark which, in Seattle, seemed quite natural: ''When 
I have made my pile, I will devote myself to two causes in 
which I am intensely interested, the relief of poverty and 
the organization of peace. In the meantime I keep myself 
acquainted as well as I can with what is going on." The 
other man was a lawyer somewhat older, of a more excitable 
temperament, and might even be described as in open revolt 
against things as they are. He began by wanting to know 
what I thought about Turgot and the physiocrats. He 
knew all about the events that led up to the French revolu- 
tion and was very eager for French culture and an ardent 
consumer of French ideas. I was very sorry to part from 
him. 

The Products follow the Ideas 

The people of Seattle, however, consume a great deal 
besides ideas. They actually aim at putting the best kind 
of furniture in their brand-new houses, hanging the best 
French pictures, such as are found all over America, on 
the walls, and accumulating our works of art and the very 
best of everything ! To mention another point : As 
Seattle is becoming a capital, it needs a concert hall. I 
can say nothing about the theaters. I hardly dare say it, 
but throughout my journey I did not manage to find a 
single evening for going to the theater. I myself was the 
show ; and yet French authors supply the Americans with 
plays that are given all over the country. The time of my 
journey corresponded with that of a comic opera or 
vaudeville troupe, which was sometimes ahead of me and 
sometimes behind me, and was in competition with me 
wherever I went. I should have liked to go and see it. 
This troupe was giving a play adapted, I believe, from the 



88 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS j 

French and called "Madame Sherry," but all I saw of it 
was its bewilderingly brightly colored posters. I neverthe- 
less met some artists, and was surprised to hear that 
symphony concerts were already very much appreciated 
at Seattle, and to such an extent that a conductor had 
been able to get together an orchestra modeled on the 
Colonne orchestra in Paris. It comprised 63 instrumental- 
ists, and I was told that great European artists whom it 
had accompanied were very pleased with it. Obviously 
the greater part of the orchestra came from Europe ; and 
they played European music — Beethoven, Wagner, Schu- 
mann, Cesar Franck, Massenet, Saint-Saens and Debussy. 
The Seattle orchestra intends to be quite as good as that 
of Boston, which is one of the best in the world and where 
the tickets are sold by auction every year at very high 
prices, enabling the management to pay handsome fees 
and attract the best European artists. 

Wherever I go, I see openings for our artists, engineers, 
doctors, surgeons, teachers, governesses and architects, 
if only they could bring themselves to speak a Httle Enghsh ; 
but though we do not care to leave our own country, which 
is understandable after all, here we can at least find in- 
structive examples, in both small things and great, which 
would be so much wealth for us and would temper our metal 
afresh, as it has done for people here, if we only knew. 

Bad Management. Deforestation. American Waste 

It will perhaps be said that the resources I admire so much 
cannot last ; that, for want of provident and far-seeing 
management, they will soon be exhausted, and that the 
fat years will soon be followed by lean ones. Some men — 
capable, I admit, but too pessimistic — say : "America will 
be played out in fifty years. Her population will have 
doubled, and the soil will not produce enough to feed 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 89 

every one. Her devastated forests will have gone alto- 
gether. Her areas of cultivation, which are immense but 
neglected, will be poor in comparison with the results ob- 
tained by intensive farming in Europe. Her coal, minerals, 
timber and the earth itself will have been worked out." 
The same has been said of the soil in France, and yet we 
see it now producing, under scientific management, four 
or five times as much, in some places, as it did formerly. 
The day no doubt will come when America will be thickly 
populated, but the people will then be better educated and 
more ingenious, and they will no longer eat their corn in 
the blade. The earth is not so easy to kill as some sup- 
pose. Deforestation, the destruction of fish and game, and 
wasteful mining are a present danger here as elsewhere, 
but action is being taken against this danger, and in this 
matter, too, the new countries will gain by our mistakes. I 
see proof of this at Seattle, as well as at Washington, where, 
during Mr. Roosevelt's presidency, I met an afforestation 
apostle, Mr. Pinchot, a man of French origin, as enthusias- 
tic as a Frenchman and an ardent upholder of American 
greatness and the proper management of his country's 
natural resources. 

Whatever may be said about it, I wonder where America's 
productive capacity will stop, seeing how enterprising and 
methodical the people are, and how greatly they have sim- 
plified their methods. There can be no doubt that they are 
wasteful and not very careful. In personal matters, the 
lack of order among Americans is enough to astound a 
French housewife. Whoever has seen an American auto- 
mobile stop at a French inn and disgorge a confusion of 
miscellaneous articles, and has observed, after the travelers 
have gone, that the bedrooms look as if a cyclone had 
struck them, or has merely been present at a meal and seen 
how the Americans, like the English, never finish what they 
have on their plates, can form some idea of the unlimited 



90 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

waste that is the rule among the so-called Anglo-Saxon 
race, in complete contrast to the Frenchman's carefulness 
and strict economy. No one is more incHned than myself 
to find fault with this wastefulness, and I have never 
succeeded in accustoming myself to it, but, to be just, we 
must recognize that it has its good side. It implies doing 
things on a big scale and in a spirit of self-confidence in- 
stead of suspicion ; it reduces personal effort to a minimum 
and saves it up for the work that is really essential. 

American Organization. The States of Washington and 

Oregon 

Organizing and simplifying progress is also a form of 
carefulness, or, as some might prefer to put it, takes the 
place of that quality and produces the same results with less 
trouble. All these souvenirs of the 1909 Exhibition, as 
well as the collections I have seen, speak eloquently. I 
have seen how an Oregon wheat crop is gathered in. I 
dare say the land gives considerably less per acre here than 
it does in France or Belgium, but this is merely a question of 
manure. For the time being, the great extent and small 
value of the land make up for this disadvantage; other 
methods will be taken in hand later on. In the meantime, 
one sees strange threshing machines hauled by thirty 
horses through oceans of cereals which they reap and bind 
into sheaves. A great many ears are no doubt lost, but 
there is a great saving in time and wages ; and what do a few 
ears matter in a field of such vast size ? It is not a wheat- 
field, but a field of battle ; the sheaves, formed in squares 
that extend farther than the eye can see, look like an army 
split up into thousands of regular platoons. Then we have 
the pasture lands, extending over hill and dale, belonging 
to some gigantic farm, extending far away to the horizon 
and bounded only by the majestic white outline of Mount 



FEOM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 9 1 

Hood or the crown of Mount Olympus ; flocks of sheep 
on the pastures and flowers in the gardens, and villas 
perched on the hillside like so many opera boxes from which 
to watch the daily spectacle of the sun setting in the glory 
of sky, cloud and water. These villas are much simpler 
but by no means less pretty than those in California — the 
two-story cottages with verandas, their ground floor 
hidden in rhododendron bushes and their walls covered 
from top to bottom with cascades of climbing roses. 

Culture and Gathering of Apples 

What shall I say of the activity that goes on at the ports, 
where immense lots of lumber that have floated or been 
brought by tugs downstream from the mountains are cut 
up by sawmills on the river bank, where the ships are loaded 
and unloaded in a few hours, and every bottom is adapted 
to the cargo it is intended to carry ? And then the rectan- 
gular forests of hops, and regiments of apple trees, and the 
gathering of the apples ! Here again the Washington and 
Oregon farmer has obtained a great advantage over his 
fellows in Europe by better methods, designed to save 
time and handling. These justly celebrated apples are 
gathered by armies of youths, collected in great numbers 
so as to finish the work as quickly as possible. They work 
on ingeniously contrived ladders which I recommend to our 
Norman and Maine farmers. We have a bad habit of 
knocking our apples down from the trees — by which I 
do not mean that we treat an apple tree like a walnut tree, 
but we take no precautions and do a good deal of damage 
to the next crop. The Americans, on the other hand, gather 
the fruit by hand so as not to break the twigs and branches ; 
but to do this they have special double ladders which are 
never leaned against the tree. Large two-horse wagons are 
driven about and soon piled up with cases, stuck all over 



92 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

with bright-colored advertising labels, which are then 
conveyed to the nearest railroad depot or port. 

Americans do not confine themselves to gathering their 
apples methodically. They watch the growth of the fruit 
very much as our vine growers look after their vines. When 
the blossom comes out, it is sprinkled with sulphates, and 
they obtain remarkably regular and abundant crops. I 
have been shown five-year-old trees that have each pro- 
duced hundreds of large apples. I mention this because 
we, too, might profit by this instance of progress. Our 
ancestors imported their apple trees into Canada, whence 
they spread all over the continent, meeting with great 
favor and proving very successful ; but these emigrant 
apple trees experienced the same fate in the New World 
as in the Old. They began to die out, and were looked upon 
as finished. They were being given up generally, when some 
enterprising young landowners of my acquaintance dis- 
covered how to treat them and regenerate them. The 
result is that even the apple trees are animated by 
the Seattle spirit, and America is becoming, not only the 
country that consumes more apples than any other in the 
world, but the one that already exports and will go on 
exporting the largest quantities. It is a question of organ- 
ization. The Americans know how to organize. If it 
were possible to summarize the difference between the 
French and the American temperament in one word, I would 
say that the one has carefulness and the other organizing 
ability. This is true in regard to a great many other 
kinds of produce besides apples. I know an old beekeeper 
in France who has just given up his hives, while those in 
America are steadily becoming better and more numerous. 

Organization is not the same thing as the care, and cer- 
tainly not the love, lavished by the French peasant on his 
little holding, but it supplements them, just as an American 
incubator is no substitute for the hen, but takes the place 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 93 

of a hundred poultry yards ; and Seattle is only one among 
a great many new centers that are continually blossoming 
out. New colonies for the regeneration of our descendants 
are being formed all over the world. Nature will give them 
the confidence we shall not be able to hand down to them. 



// only France Knew 

If only France realized all this ! If only all the dissatisfied 
people who exhaust their energies in fruitless conflict and 
recrimination were enlightened as to the spheres in which 
they could find a certain return for their efforts, what an 
amount of good and useful seed they would disseminate in 
the world, to the honor of our country ! But they do not 
know, or rather they do not know enough, for it must be 
admitted that great progress is being accomplished. French- 
men are traveling and learning foreign languages. Cities 
such as Roubaix and Grenoble, following in the footsteps of 
Lyon, have become centers of radiation. May the French 
do as their ancestors did ; initiative is in their blood. 
First of all, may they stop counting on the government, 
which, republican or monarchical, is instinctively hostile 
to all personal enterprise. 

4. Portland. The Sacramento. The Gold Seekers. The 
Rose City. The Automatic Telephone 

It is a fine journey from Seattle to Tacoma, and especially 
from Tacoma to Portland, through mighty mountains, 
rich in forests, mines and coal, to say nothing of plains fertile 
with magnificent fruit and grain. Portland is a progressive 
city, like the rest, although the Seattle people slightingly 
describe it as a ''conservative city." It is also known as 
the "Rose City," and has over 200,000 inhabitants. It is 
the port for the magnificent Columbia valley, larger than 



94 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

the whole of France. It is a very important trading and 
manufacturing center. The ideal, automatic, domestic 
telephone, with practically no exchange operators, no over- 
hearing and no loss of temper was already in operation 
here in 191 1. The system was explained to me by Mr. 
Samuel Hill, the able president of the concern. I saw 
and was much impressed by a sort of library of little in- 
struments that were receiving, and promptly transmitting, 
sounds, voices and other expressions of Hfe, and taking the 
place of hundreds of people and brains. When we see 
such a delicate, human, manifold and complicated system 
worked by mechanical means, we may expect almost 
anything. Mr. Hill is also one of the most earnest ad- 
vocates of the creation of a network of highroads which 
are almost entirely lacking in the United States. I shall 
have frequent occasion to refer to this deficiency as well 
as to the inadequacy of the river traffic. 

The Columbia River 

The Columbia River, as seen when leaving Portland on 
the east side, is celebrated for its beauty. It forms a lake, 
or rather a series of lakes, of the most imposing kind, 
whose waters reach almost to the foot of the high mountains 
and rocks that form their banks. American rivers, neglected 
Uke the trees, are on a scale befitting the country. Spread- 
ing out nobly over the plains they have conquered, they 
are none the less fine in their struggle with mountains and 
their efforts to find their proper outlet in spite of all ob- 
stacles. 

Time has not allowed me to describe the Sacramento, 
up whose course we went towards Portland. It was 
nevertheless a splendid sight, calculated to call up remem- 
brance of the early European pioneers and of the conflict 
of science and commerce against the Indians, the solitude 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 95 

and the united forces of Nature. To-day the mountains 
through which the Sacramento rushes stand stripped of 
their forests, which have been ravaged and destroyed by 
fire. A great work of reparation is here for the American 
people to accompHsh. Nowhere, except perhaps in Turkey 
and Greece, have I better realized man's improvidence and 
his frenzy to destroy what Nature has taken centuries to 
prepare. The Arabs say : " One man can destroy what 
a thousand could not build." Here one might say: *'One 
man can destroy what thousands of years have created." 

The Gold 

In combination with railways, gold — the frenzied thirst 
for gold — is no doubt the great offender. At the be- 
ginning everything was sacrificed to getting gold from the 
banks of the Sacramento, and, Httle by Httle, this mag- 
nificent country has been reduced to something Hke a heap 
of cinders. Even the mines themselves fell victims to the 
prevaiUng craze and were abandoned, because they had 
not been worked with an eye to the future. Science has 
now, as elsewhere, corrected man's mistakes and multipUed 
the means at his disposal. A public movement, which has 
my heartiest support, here as in France, against deforesta- 
tion — another form of violence — is in process of organiza- 
tion, and in the meantime new methods have made it 
practicable to extract a great deal more gold from deposits 
which were regarded as worked out. I was fortunate 
enough to travel with and make the acquaintance of a 
gold seeker, Mr. Hutchinson, and under his guidance I 
saw the Sacramento. He was, of course, a wanderer. 
From Seattle he transferred his energies to the Klondike, 
where he worked hard for eight years. He then went down 
to Arizona, where he established himself with his family, 
his motor car and his crushing mills. With him, on the 



96 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

banks of the Sacramento, I followed the two main processes 
— the washing of sand from the river bed and the winning 
of auriferous and other ores from the mountain. Gold 
is by no means the only metal found in California. Silver, 
copper and many other ores are waiting to be opened up. 
What progress has been made ! I was shown a picture of a 
miner of fifty years ago. All he had was a donkey, a 
pickax, a shovel and some sacks ! Nowadays the miner 
can make his choice from among all sorts of ways of breaking 
the rock into pieces, finding out what there is in it, reducing 
it to dust and chemically extracting whatever is valuable. 
Every village store in the district shows modern mining 
implements and models of machines for automatically 
cutting tunnels. It is appalling to think of the energy 
that must have been expended fifty years ago by gold 
seekers in such a desert, thrown entirely upon their own 
resources, first with their poverty and then with their 
wealth — sometimes the more dangerous of the two. 
Everything is organized nowadays. The gold seekers are 
their own policemen. The thief has distance and the 
telegraph against him. As soon as he vanishes, his descrip- 
tion is sent out and he is caught in the next town. The 
gold-seeking business has settled down, like others, and, 
to judge by my friend, it produces very fine men. 

The crushing mills bestride the Sacramento hke so many 
fisheries, with nets intended to catch, not fish but nuggets. 
Up above, masses of rock are being blasted with dynamite 
close to a rudimentary house half hidden among the charred 
skeletons of the forest. Then there is a little Decauville 
railway that brings its trucks full of the fragments of rock 
to just above the house and pours them into the first floor, 
where they are broken by machinery and fall in small 
pieces to the ground floor. Here they are reduced to 
powder and passed down to tanks in which the gold is 
dissolved, precipitated by zinc and finally isolated. Here 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 97 

and there, solitary lights can be seen shining on the moun- 
tain side at night. Each miner is watching over his steadily- 
growing treasure, protected solely by the conception of a 
common interest — the need of security. This need regu- 
lates modern organization all over the world. Govern- 
ments will not evade the necessity of thus regulating their 
relations with one another by limiting their sacrifices of 
men and money to a minimum. Future generations will 
have to make up for a great many mistakes. 

Progress of Agriculture 

But, patience ! The first part of the line from San 
Francisco to Portland is a magnificent conquest of modern 
progress. Nowhere have I seen the material and moral 
triumph of modern organization over the confusion exist- 
ing formerly more eloquently asserted and proved. Here 
we have great mountains parallel to the coast, to the north 
and south of San Francisco, extending their fertile mantles 
as far as the plains, like a vast expanse of pasture land and 
well-prepared harvests. Nature looks more animated and 
alive than ever. Some of these mountain sides are bare; 
some bristling with trees or covered with live stock. 
Everywhere there are numberless legions of flocks, thou- 
sands and thousands of cattle, sheep and horses ; there 
are hogs, turkeys and chickens, to say nothing of the 
flowers that brighten the greensward — blue flowers and 
the Californian orange-tinted poppy, as brilliant as an 
orchid. 

There is no sign of protection for all this life and wealth. 
A dog can be seen here and there, but not a single man. 
Organization, however, is here. Long lines of thousands 
of fruit trees remind us that man is at hand. He is near 
enough for his handiwork to be seen and admired, and far 
enough to give us some idea of what Cahfornia will be 



98 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

like when, instead of two million inhabitants, it has ten 
times that number. 

I am sorry not to be able to remain longer in the Pacific 
states, but my route has been mapped out for me, hour 
by hour, for the past two months, and I cannot avoid 
disappointing some one, unless I resist temptation and 
go on with the regularity of a chronometer. Farewell, 
then, to the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade Mountains, 
the Sacramento, the Snake River, the Columbia River and 
the Shasta mineral springs. With a salute to Mount 
Rainier, standing like a white pyramid in the distance, on 
we go through haughty chains of blue mountains, through 
still undevastated forests and past torrents whose names 
are unknown to me. Sitting quietly in the train I watch 
these varied landscapes awakening to life under the in- 
fluence of man's approach. Passing the first outlying 
spurs of the Rocky Mountains, we enter the wild and 
arid regions, fertilized by the Mormons, where other ques- 
tions await us. Here I am in Salt Lake City. 

5. Dry Farming. The Mormons 

The Mormons have rendered humanity the very great 
service of reclaiming an unattractive and supposedly 
sterile country. As the state of Utah it has become 
known, like the rest, by the importance and variety of its 
produce, both mineral and agricultural. This is an irri- 
gation country, like Arizona, with this difference, that in 
Arizona the Federal administration paid for immense pub- 
lic works, the chief of which was completed in 191 1 and is 
called ^Hhe Roosevelt Dam'\' but when irrigation is either 
too expensive or impracticable, the people find something 
else, and the land does without irrigation, thanks to ''dry 
f arming. ^^ I have heard it argued in France that this is 
simply our former method of cultivation in furrows, but 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY 99 

if we consult the reports from our representatives in Algeria 
and Tunis (where the question excites the keenest interest 
and conflicting opinions), arid especially the records of the 
much-talked-about Dry Farming Congresses, whose de- 
voted secretary I met at Colorado Springs ; when we hear 
what the governor of the state says about the matter, 
and when we read the books written by the head of the 
Utah Agricultural College, Mr. John A. Widtsoe, commenc- 
ing by his celebrated work (translated into French by Miss 
Anne-Marie Augustin Bernard), ''Dry Farming and the 
Cultivation of Dry Land," it is difficult to deny that here 
we have a really new system of cultivation for semi-arid 
land in which the moisture from rain that fell two years 
before can be preserved. This system has been adopted 
after patient experimenting with the special soil and climate 
of the country, and we can understand why the Mormons 
and their rather numerous imitators in the other north- 
western states adhere to it. Consumers are quite as 
enthusiastic as producers, and I have known the "non- 
irrigated" label on fruit to be a recommendation. Utah 
celery has obtained a hold on the New York market, and 
beetroot raising has increased so much in Utah that a great 
many local sugar factories have been put up. 

The progress made by this extraordinary kind of agri- 
culture in a more than extraordinary country has caused 
the Mormon population to receive constantly increasing 
additions from outside, and this has made it possible to 
work the very valuable mineral deposits, particularly 
copper ; while the workmen, being themselves consumers, 
have stimulated the already large agricultural output. 
This progress, of which little was heard when I was at 
Salt Lake City in 191 1, as the guest of that admirable 
man. Bishop Spalding, is now a widely recognized fact. A 
learned and well-known American, Professor W. M, Davis, 
of Harvard University, was the organizer of a great scien- 



lOO AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

tific excursion, carried out from August to October, 191 2, 
through the United States. He invited the world's leading 
geographers : France, which he knows exceptionally well, 
was represented by the principal disciples of our dear 
countryman Vidal de la Blache. In the ''Annales de 
Geographie" (March 15, 1913) there is a remarkable series 
of articles on the most interesting of the places visited, 
notably Utah, which M. Gallois has described in a few pages. 

Illegal hut Existing Polygamy 

The Mormon sect is still very powerful. Its principle 
is that man should work and produce. Its emblem is still 
a hive with innumerable bees. Polygamy has ceased to be 
legal in Utah since the territory was raised to the rank 
of a state and had to conform to the Constitution of the 
United States ; but, as a matter of fact, it still exists. It 
cannot be abolished at short notice. 

Living in vast and thinly peopled tracts of country, 
the Mormon colonists instituted polygamy as an element 
of civilization and a religious duty. The best man, they 
consider, is he who has the greatest number of children, 
and the best women are those who share in the accompKsh- 
ment of this duty. The women are recruited in distant 
countries, particularly in northern Europe, whence the 
immigrants are taken to Boston and thence, under various 
labels, to Utah, where they declare themselves quite satis- 
fied with their mode of Hfe and even more determined than 
the men not to change it. It is true that the country is now 
fairly well populated^ and the old religious and local obliga- 
tion is opposed to the legal and general interdiction ; but 
in Utah, as elsewhere, the law is powerless to change the 
habits and needs of the people, and when it is premature, 
it is evaded. Agriculture still calls for a great many pairs 
of arms and a great many famiUes. How are we to con- 



FROM SEATTLE TO SALT LAKE CITY lOI 

demn to-morrow what we were obliged to accept 3^ester- 
day and have to tolerate to-day? How are we to outlaw 
the coming generation of children without inflicting injury 
on those already born? To take the case of the children 
only: their position cannot be settled by a mere decree, 
and it is often a very difficult one. Many of them adhere 
to their parents' creed. They believe in what their parents 
taught and practiced. They belong to families of ten, 
twenty, thirty or forty children. When a father complies 
with the new law and repudiates one of his wives, he also 
repudiates some of his children and inflicts irreparable 
injury on their mother and themselves, while at the same 
time he commits an act of injustice to the detriment of 
some and the advantage of others. The situation becomes 
hopelessly complicated as regards the right of property 
inheritance. Such an act is a crime that divides a family 
into several hostile camps and sets brother against brother. 
There are brothers in the same town who have not spoken 
to one another for twenty years. 

Nevertheless, the state of Utah is prosperous. Salt 
Lake City is growing steadily and is the most hospitable of 
cities. I was invited to speak in the Mormon tabernacle ; 
I was presented to the audience by the governor of the 
state ; the great organ, in this great hall which will seat 
14,000 people, greeted me with a recital in honor of France, 
ending, amid applause, with the stirring strains of the 
Marseillaise. 

I also addressed an audience composed of the three thou- 
sand young people of both sexes attending the university — 
an audience of these children that are divided against 
themselves. I did not want my mission to omit a state 
of such importance — a state that has its vote and brings 
its great share of influence to bear on Congress at Washing- 
ton and on the destiny of the country ; but I must admit 
that I ended my visit to Utah in a somewhat doubtful 



I02 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

frame of mind, wondering how peace, which may be or- 
ganized among nations, can ever be established in the 
mental and family Hfe of Salt Lake City. It is a question 
of time, and also of money : of time, because there is inter- 
communication among all the states, and the Mormons 
will be no better able than the Indians to remain isolated 
from the American nation, especially as they are more 
industrious, more enterprising and more imbued with the 
spirit of trade. Moreover it will be with polygamy here as 
elsewhere — at Constantinople, for instance. A pasha of 
my acquaintance, with very cultivated French tastes, took 
advantage of the Young Turk revolution to bring his 
young wife to Paris two or three years ago. She was no 
less cultivated and no less French than himself, and also 
very fashionable. They paid sundry visits to the shops 
and to the dressmakers in the Rue de la Paix. On returning 
from one of these visits, my friend exclaimed: "This will 
finish it! It costs too much to dress one wife : how can we 
afford to keep several? It's all over with polygamy!" he 
added, laughing. He was quite converted to our view of 
the question. 

It has also been pointed out to me that the sumptuous 
style of Mormon worship is extremely expensive and con- 
stitutes a heavy tax on labor and incomes, in addition to 
municipal and general taxation. The result must be that 
the Mormon religion will soon become, not only anomalous, 
illegal and a source of all kinds of difficulties, but a luxury. 



CHAPTER VI 



COLORADO 



I. The Rocky Mountains. Colorado Springs. The canon. 
The cathedral spires. The prairie. The Indians. — 2. The State 
University. Easter Sunday. Presided over by the Rocky Moun- 
tains. — 3. Denver. I lecture in English. Sons and Daugh- 
ters of the Revolution. Follow the flag! But have it in good 
hands. The lesson of the Spanish war. A cornet solo. — 4. The 
Chamber of Commerce, the Press, the Legislature of Colo- 
rado. The Governor of the State. His Honor the Mayor of 
Denver. The Press of Denver. The Legislature. Lady mem- 
bers. The Chief Justice. 

I. The Rocky Mountains. Colorado Springs. The Canon 

We are still traveling among snow and are slov^ly scaling 
the outlying spurs of the Rocky Mountains. The train is 
hauled and pushed, with one engine in front and one behind. 
Gradually it becomes hemmed in between the walls of 
gloomy, titanic gorges that make the sky seem farther off 
than ever. Deeper and narrower they become ; one after 
another they follow, all steeped in sohtude and silence. 
Rocky masses hang suspended overhead as far as the eye can 
see. On Friday morning, April 15, I found that the train 
had squeezed its way, under cover of the darkness and my 
ignorance of the surroundings, into the bottom of a narrow 
precipice. Yesterday we saw the gradual growth of rivers 
that were as yet nothing but mountain torrents; to-day 
we are at their birthplace. Here are the Colorado and the 
Rio Grande, great rivers that I have seen flowing toward 
the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico. Here I 

103 



I04 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

find them, not by any means meek — on the contrary 
they are fierce and unruly — but so meager ! The train 
makes its way defiantly up their course, and in the deep and 
narrow fissure, or canon, where the struggle goes on, 
there is soon no room for anything but the two rivals, 
steam and water. The narrowed torrent leaps up in 
revolt, but none the less the panting train makes its way. 
Let but a fringe of rock break away and the train will be 
squashed like a caterpillar, and then drowned. Are we 
to pity poor humanity ? No ; rather let us admire man's 
splendid genius that nothing can turn back — a genius 
that disciplines the very powers of destruction and turns 
them to account. How much longer is it to be deprived 
of the means of action that we lavish on the barren service 
of war ? 

Finally, the train emerges and straightens itself out in full 
daylight. It has reached the point that dominates both 
the Atlantic and Pacific slopes, higher than the snow line, 
10,200 feet above sea level. From this point of vantage 
I greet an apparent chaos of mountains. It is an 
inexhaustible well-spring, a source of sources, the birth- 
place of rivers that make their way toward the four points 
of the compass and distribute their waters to the west, 
east, north and south, fertilizing the plains and creating 
the wealth of an entire continent. 

The descent is no less impressive than the ascent. It 
is another succession of gorges and canons, especially 
the latter. Down below flows the Arkansas, at first a 
brooklet, then a torrent and finally a river, a tributary 
of the Mississippi. But now the train and river are no 
longer in conflict, but race each other. They follow the 
same slope and almost the same path. The forces of man 
and of Nature are in perfect accord, and the same limpid 
water that supplies steam for our locomotive marks out a 
path beside it among the rocks. 



COLORADO 105 

The grandeur, the majestic lines and the coloring of 
these rocks exceeded all my anticipations. I rather mis- 
trusted Colorado and the fanciful and highly ornate descrip- 
tions published about it by so many people who try to 
embellish what they describe. But I was wrong ; what I 
found was a combination of strength and gracefulness, of 
massiveness and of lightness — an impression of the same 
kind that is made by Rouen Cathedral. I often think of the 
man who should be the one painter of these marvels, 
my dear friend Claude Monet, who was ridiculed because 
he ventured to express himself sincerely and who un- 
fortunately v/ill never see them except through my eyes. 

The Cathedral Spires 

At the bottom of the gradient I arrive at the health resort 
of Colorado Springs, the Davos of the United States, cele- 
brated for its numerous cures. Among the friends awaiting 
me I find some former consumptives, now quite strong and 
permanently cured. At Colorado Springs I confined my- 
self to observing. I was the guest of the hard-working 
president of the college, Mr. Slocum, and, from the 
window of my room, I was never tired of looking at the 
Rocky Mountains we had just crossed and the peaks 
standing out immaculate in white against the blue sky. 
Sheltered by this magnificent screen, I breathed in the keen 
and salubrious air under a burning sun. I am convinced 
that without the cold — of which I was constantly complain- 
ing during the greater part of my journey in these suppos- 
edly hot countries — I should not have been able to endure 
the fatigue of my tour. 

As my lecture did not take place until the evening, after 
dinner, I had my afternoon free to make a motor trip 
along some of the brick-colored tracks connecting the 
prairie with the Rocky Mountains. I thought I had ex- 



Io6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

hausted my capacity for admiration, but the new sight 
my friends had prepared for me was not in the least Hke 
anything I had expected. They took me to the " Garden 
of the Gods." At the right hour of the day, when the 
cliffs and peaks, appropriately called " Cathedral Spires,'' 
rising from the plain as if by magic, are lit up by the sun 
and stand out red against the sky. 

The Prairie 

I cannot, moreover, avoid paying my tribute of admira- 
tion to the undulating prairie extending, like the sea, to the 
horizon. The soft tints of this endless plain, that shows 
pale yellow, pink and blue in the distance, contrast with 
the rich and vivid coloring of the mountains. It is like an 
ocean spreading out before me. The United States are 
bounded on the east and west by the Atlantic and the 
Pacific, but there is a third ocean between these two — 
the prairie. The great snow-covered heights we have just 
crossed are the western shore of this inland ocean. 

The Indians 

One fixed idea has pursued me during my long journey 
through all these different states, some mere deserts and 
others fertile, some arid and others wooded. Less than 
fifty years ago all these mountains, gorges, valleys and 
plains were inhabited. Peoples of incomparable vigor 
and of a very fine type, almost white, lived here by violence 
and warfare, and might very well have thought themselves 
invincible and beyond the reach of outside intervention. 
Being without organization, the weaker called in the 
assistance of the whites to shake off the oppression of the 
stronger. Determined as they were to slaughter one 
another, the Indians have, so to speak, vanished with 



COLORADO 107 

great rapidity. "Only thirty-five years ago," one of my 
friends told me, ''the Indians encamped on the plain where 
our university is built. Every day and every night we were 
in danger of being waylaid and murdered." Another man, 
not very old and still quite active, told me he had crossed 
the prairie in a caravan thirteen times from the eastward 
as far as Denver, which was then half a town and half an 
Indian camp. The journey took days and days and was 
not without danger. For food, the travelers shot a buffalo 
or an antelope and left the carcass lying where it fell after 
having cut off and broiled a part of it. At night they took 
turns guarding the camp or wagon, watching their baggage 
and especially their horses. The Indian lay in wait for 
the white man and attacked him when he could. The 
illustrated papers of '' Easter Saturday " are full of recollec- 
tions of this kind. I bought one of them which represents, 
with that prodigality of the American press, in which 
advertisements and pictures occupy so much space, a 
classic scene of this period, which is so close and which seems 
so prehistoric. It was in 1875, on the very ground where 
the long tennis courts of Colorado Springs now stretch 
out their well-laid rectangles. A young colonist and his 
bride sought the solitudes. He, entirely at his ease, did 
not perceive the tomahawk which the powerful Indian, 
ambushed in the tall grass, was about to throw at him. He 
was doomed, and what of the girl ? What tortures were in 
store for her? Only thirty-five years ago, the nomad 
Indian looked upon the white man as a kind of game that 
it was his business to exterminate, while the white man 
destroyed the Indians like wild beasts. This implacable 
conflict was not what was contemplated by our great 
pioneers when they crossed America quite alone, from the 
St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and succeeded in 
making themselves liked, and obtaining willing help and 
service. 



Io8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Whose fault was it ? The question is a complicated one, 
and the Americans are not alone to blame. The fact is 
that the Indians fell victims to their own religion of warfare. 
Like other nations I have had opportunities of examining 
closely in Africa and Eastern Europe, they raised ignorance 
and idleness to the rank of nobility ; their only ambition 
was the domination of the weak. Their only object in 
life was to fight one another. They despised labor, and 
they succumbed to wasted courage. If they had been 
better guided by some clear-sighted elite, they might have 
used their heroism to better advantage. There are plenty 
of examples of equally brave and picturesque nations 
that have remained alive and have compelled universal 
respect by their steadfast adherence to peace. They 
have sought for, and won, the most arduous kind of 
victory — the victory over one's self, which paves the way 
for every other. The Japanese, for instance, have for 
centuries been accumulating forces that the Indians ex- 
hausted, and when the time of danger came, these accumu- 
lated reserves were instrumental in securing a triumph over 
Europe itself. 

I have been constantly endeavoring to place these teach- 
ings before Americans for them to meditate upon. It is 
a fine thing to die for one's country or for a great cause ; 
but to die so as not to work, to die for the mere pleasure of 
fighting, is not giving one's life, but losing it. This is not 
serving one's country, but rather sacrificing it. 

2. The State University. Easter Sunday 

I left Colorado Springs on a radiant spring morning. 
The whole city was making holiday. From every house 
came out children in new clothes, on the occasion of Easter 
Sunday. It was a pretty sight, but a sad one for a traveler 
from abroad. 



COLORADO 109 

Presided over by the Rocky Mountains 

I merely went through Denver, jumping from the train 
into a street car to go to the university at Boulder, where 
I was the guest of President James H. Baker. I was to 
lecture at four o'clock. There were so many people that 
the great hall was not half large enough, and I was asked to 
speak outside. How could I refuse? The crowd, regard- 
less of burning sunshine and a cold wind, flowed out over 
the grass under the canopy of a clear sky, and I spoke from 
the top of a staircase with the Rocky Mountains as chair- 
man. Not for many a long day shall I forget that crowd 
of attentive listeners with their expressive faces, in such 
surroundings. I did not expect such an Easter Sunday. 
To me it ended like a festival. I expatiated to all the young 
people before me on the beauty of their future and the 
might and grandeur of a country that could set an exam- 
ple of progress and justice. I expressed my confidence in 
their energy. I summarized what the ancestors of the French 
people and their own had done together to bequeath a free 
and prosperous country to them. I told them what they, 
in their turn, had to do, and I showed them what was 
wanting. When I had finished, their fathers and mothers 
came forward, like the young men, shook hands with 
me and thanked me, in accordance with the touching 
custom followed after every one of my addresses, in all 
parts of the United States. This time it was done so spon- 
taneously that I felt impelled to say: ''I felt lonely this 
morning, but now I have a family about me." After 
the others came a young man, who said timidly, almost 
trying to run away as he did so: ''Thanks for what you 
said; I needed it! " 

I keep these words in the bottom of my heart as an ex- 
pression of the sentiment that instinctively attracted me 
to the United States. These young men indeed need to be 



no AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

told of something beside conquests and the glory of brute 
force; they need to have the patriotism of labor and 
patience held up to them ; they need to have the heroism 
of the aviator, of the inventor, of the pioneer, of the scientist, 
of the artist who refuses to sacrifice his ideal to routine 
and the heroism of those who have devoted themselves 
to the service of humanity, exalted before their eyes. They 
need to be warned against the innumerable causes of error 
that lie in wait for them, and to be shown the beauty of 
life that they can devote to making themselves useful and 
loved instead of feared. 

I devoted this Easter Sunday to paying the homage our 
two nations owe to the noble souvenirs they have in com- 
mon. I addressed this American audience on behalf of 
the thousands of unknown or misunderstood Frenchmen 
who lived the heroic life, — on behalf of Cartier, Cham- 
plain, Marquette, La Salle, Lafayette, Rochambeau, 
Dupleix, de Lesseps, on behalf of all the noble hearts who 
scattered the sacred seed of their enthusiasm to the four 
winds of heaven. 

3. Denver 

After my visit to the university I returned, happy at be- 
ing alone again, to Denver to sleep. Next day I was the 
guest of the chamber of commerce as well as of the Sons 
and Daughters of the American Revolution. I spoke all 
day. 

Lecturing in English 

I should like to take this opportunity of disclaiming 
the too flattering opinions of some of my friends with regard 
to my knowledge of the English language. I speak fairly 
fluently, as I have spoken Greek and ItaHan, for the good 
of my cause, but without in the least pretending to superior 
knowledge, and not so well as many of my friends who are 



COLORADO III 

more timid or less practiced than myself. To convince an 
audience and make simple ideas penetrate into its conscious- 
ness, it is a good thing not to have a too abundant vocabu- 
lary. It is a good thing to repeat the same word when it is 
the right one, and it is an especially good thing not to convey 
the impression of being a mere rhetorician. The anatomy 
of the idea, and not the language in which it is clothed, 
is what makes the impression. The more brilliant and 
sumptuous this clothing is, the more it is apt to make the 
listener's mind wander and excite his mistrust. The speaker 
scores a success, but the effect is less lasting. 

Sons and Daughters of the Revolution 

I accomplished a miracle at Denver, according to the 
Colorado newspapers. It was an easy kind of miracle, 
seeing that I knew nothing about it. I restored peace 
between two rival bodies, the Sons and Daughters of the 
American Revolution. They united to receive me and gave 
a very fine banquet in honor of France. 

These societies exist in many cities of the United States 
and have considerable influence. Americans are proud of 
their national origin and celebrate it with youthful fervor. 

So far from taking no interest in these demonstrations, 
American women preponderate in them. Our out-of-date 
expression, ''the weaker sex," certainly does not apply 
to them. They have been spared the fate of European 
women, whose place, for a very long time, was with the 
children, and who, when conquering armies marched 
through the country, were nothing but a luxury or a burden. 
Women took part in the creation of the United States and 
the war of independence. To-day, being fully conscious 
of the obscure but all the greater share taken by their 
female ancestors in the colonization of the New World 
and in all the great national crises that have arisen, they are 



112 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Openly patriotic; they air their opinions and take part 
in pubHc affairs. 

Nowhere was action of this kind more necessary than at 
Denver, and, in fact, in all new centers that have sprung up 
so quickly as to leave no time for a moral rule to be insti- 
tuted together with material arrangements. People had to 
make sure of their living first of all, group themselves to- 
gether in a hurry, build railroads, put up electric wires, 
plan streets, provide for water, food and light, construct 
houses, stores, clubs, schools, churches, banks and hotels, 
organize their post offices, police and local government and, 
in short, found their city ; after which they had time to 
look around and begin to educate the public mind. This 
is the law that every colony has to obey. We must not 
forget that Denver did not exist at all sixty years ago and 
that it now has a population of over two hundred thou- 
sand. We should have to carry injustice to the verge of 
foolishness not to give the United States due credit for the 
marvelous cities that have been built up. I am filled with 
admiration for the amount of good order that prevails, 
combined with very high aspirations, in all these im- 
provised capitals. 

Follow the Flag 

The banquet was largely attended. It was more than cor- 
dial, fraternal. Americans greet a guest as if they were under 
an obHgation to him. With them he is indeed welcome. 
I sat next to the president of the Daughters, an agreeable 
and distinguished woman, whom nobody could call "provin- 
cial." We discussed the future of her association and, nec- 
essarily, the future of her country, the two being inseparable. 
She showed an ardent and patriotic desire for peace, know- 
ing that peace alone can insure prosperity and strength 
to the United States, but she was not afraid of war. The 
three colors of the French and American flags, with which 



COLORADO I 13 

the hall was decorated, v/ere a symbol, both for her and for 
me, of any just and productive revolt against oppression, 
and she readily indorsed the proposition, on which I based 
my remarks, that we should be patriotic and follow the flag. 

Have the Flag in Good Hands 

My answer was this : yes, we have to follow the flag ; 
let us be patriotic; without nations there can be no in- 
ternational cooperation, no peace; the essential condition 
of peace is a good national organization in all countries. 
We do not propose to relapse into the Sioux, Huron, Apache 
and Iroquois stage ; no nation is more patriotic than the 
French ; but the more a nation follows its flag, the more 
necessary it is that the flag should be in good hands, and 
this is where we see that a national education is indis- 
pensable to every civilized nation. It is quite as necessary 
to Americans as to others, if not more necessary, because, 
unlike many others, they have not been taught by bitter 
experience. American women can do a great deal to further 
this education in their own country. They can keep on 
the lookout to moderate the impulses of public opinion and 
muzzle the irresponsible alarmists who excite the crowd, 
the press and public opinion and, through that opinion, 
the governrnxcnt. 

Level-headed as he may be, as well as his friends, a 
President of the United States will be, some day (and he 
has been already), unable to hold out in times of panic, 
if public opinion is not prepared to support him. 

In saying this, I feel I am voicing a sentiment I have 
often heard expressed. At the University of California, 
for instance, before a crowded audience, the president, 
Mr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, — a well-read, cultivated man 
and an ardent patriot, — introduced me to his students, 
nearly a thousand young men and women from eighteen 



114 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

to twenty- two, in these words: ''Educate yourselves, so 
that future generations may avoid the wars that past 
generations might have avoided. The United States have 
hitherto had only three foreign wars : with England in 1812, 
with Mexico and recently with Spain, and all three might 
have been averted." 

It ended to their advantage, but they ran serious risks. 
We all know that Americans are brave, but so are Spaniards. 
If the latter had been better prepared and their sailors 
had not been handicapped by lack of ammunition ; if they 
had had a defensive organization in Cuban waters and the 
merest apology for submarine defenses, would the Americans 
have been found ready, or could they have been ready? 
We must admit that they could not, if we face the actual 
facts and decline to be put off with talk. 

This unnecessary war might therefore have been a disaster 
for the development of the United States. In any case it 
cost the country thousands of young men, the flower of 
its manhood, who sacrificed their lives in vain — lives that 
were quite as necessary for the prosperity as for the glory 
of their country. 

A Cornet Solo 

Those American women who try to prevent a renewal of 
similar mistakes are patriots, but it must be admitted that 
they are infinitely freer than European women to undertake 
this noble task. I shall have many occasions to mention 
instances of the bold way in which American women take 
the initiative. One of them occurred at this very banquet, 
and I commend it to the attention of the ''Parisienne." 
One little incident may mean a great deal, and this one 
shows, better perhaps than any other with which I am 
acquainted, the immeasurable self-confidence with which the 
American woman faces prejudice, criticism and even ridi- 
cule, and ends by getting the public on her side. 



COLORADO 115 

This is what happened : We were in the middle of the 
banquet, at the time when the sorbet usually comes along. 
A singer had just given us Schumann's ''Marseillaise," 
followed by a piece specially composed for the occasion, 
''The Prince of Peace," when suddenly we heard a solo. 
It was so full of sound and melody and so faultless that 
all conversation stopped. It was a cornet solo. I listened, 
and then looked to see what nightingale was favoring us 
with its trills and runs, breathing out its plaint, and invoking 
Heaven with its hymn of praise. The nightingale with the 
cornet was a woman — a fair, graceful girl. As soon as 
she had finished I got up at once and shook her hand with 
all the French warmth I possess. I do not know whether 
she fully understood that I was congratulating her even 
more on her courage than on her talent. The audience 
was wildly enthusiastic and insisted upon an "encore," 
which was even better. Never before had I seen a woman 
play the cornet. She was a complete embodiment of 
satisfaction, expansiveness and absolute self-confidence. 
She struck me as the happiest woman in the United States, 
and no doubt she was, for a girl must be exceptionally 
brave and good to make up her mind to earn her living so 
pluckily. 

Let me venture to suggest, in all seriousness, a cornet 
cure for all spoilt children and neurotic women. 

I must not forget that before going to this revolutionizing 
banquet I was present at a no less memorable luncheon 
which the Denver Chamber of Commerce had long ago 
arranged to give during my visit. 

4. The Colorado Chamber of Commerce. Press and Leg- 
islature. The Governor of the State 

Everybody knows what is or ought to be the business 
of a chamber of commerce. It is intended to exhibit, 



Il6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

to the best advantage, the resources it places before its 
clientele. I realize perfectly that the innumerable re- 
ceptions with which I have been honored by all kinds of 
chambers of commerce, in all the countries I have visited 
in Europe and America, have been principally intended to 
impress me with the superiority of each chamber over all 
the others. Denver did things in ultra- American style. 
They gave us maps of the United States showing Denver as 
a center of dazzling light, with all the rest of the world 
in shadow. The luncheon, at which there were three 
or four hundred guests, was delightful. At least half of 
them, as usual, were ladies. There were also farmers, 
engineers, the principal ofi&cials of the state, the bishop (a 
very intelligent and broad-minded man) and so on. The 
governor, Hon. John F. Shafroth, made an incisive and 
witty speech in the easiest and simplest style. The ap- 
plause with which it was received ought to give food for 
reflection to the megalomaniacs in Eastern America, and 
I have heard the same argument approved time after 
time. 

''If it is true," he said, ''that we must spend a great deal 
of money in preparing for war so as to have peace, the 
United States have been uncommonly lucky up to now. 
Our only two neighbors are Great Britain, who used to be 
our bitter enemy as she was France's, and Mexico, whom we 
have also fought. These events are comparatively recent, 
and, according to the great modern principles, they ought 
to have placed us in a record state of insecurity and 
obliged us to spend an amount of money proportionate to the 
extent of our frontiers, which are twenty times as long as 
those of any European state, to say nothing of our two open 
coast lines and our exceptional vulnerability as a young 
and thinly populated country. And yet, in spite of our 
ignorance of these accepted traditions, we have managed 
to get along for a century without spending anything on 



COLORADO 117 

frontier defense. That frontier has not been defended by 
a single ship or a single gun for a hundred years. During 
all that time we have been saving something like two hun- 
dred million dollars a year, and we have built cities, made 
harbors and created a place for ourselves in the international 
market and the world's estimation. The experiment has 
been so successful that we are now proposing an unlimited 
arbitration treaty to England. As a matter of fact it will 
simply be a final and practical application of our traditional 
policy. It must be admitted that we are not at all in the 
fashion." 

His Honor the Mayor of Denver 

This elected governor of Colorado has been more attacked 
by the newspapers than any man I know — always except- 
ing, of course, the mayor of Denver, because any one who 
has to manage a great, new city, almost a state in itself, 
has to satisfy or moderate the claims of a great many hungry 
office seekers, and is bound to excite a great deal of resent- 
ment and bitterness. Here, as elsewhere, electoral grati- 
tude slumbers, while the discontented make all the noise. 
The funniest part of it was that I was the only one who took 
these signs of discontent seriously. They are the salt of 
public life in Colorado. 

My illusions having been promptly dispelled, I got myself 
in harmony with the dominant note and, encouraged by 
the general good humor, I replied to the toasts to my 
health by developing the idea that we must suffer in order 
to be happy. Wherever I find people with a large share of 
Fortune's favor, they are gloomy and full of complaints, 
whereas poor people who lead hard lives are cheerful and 
sympathetic. The Englishman who had too many society 
invitations was quite right when he said that life would be 
tolerable but for its pleasures ; he might have added that it 
would be intolerable but for its difficulties. Our only 



Il8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

merit comes from the obstacles we overcome. Those who 
oppose us are really our best friends. 

These truths, which would probably be considered as so 
many paradoxes in old Europe, were fortunate enough to 
delight the Denver business men as much as myself. I 
have seldom seen such a jolly face as that of the mayor of 
Denver or heard such whole-hearted, contagious laughter. 
The mere sight of him is enough to make one develop un- 
expected energy. Before I met him I was rather inchned 
to pity him. Morning and afternoon several of the Denver 
papers poured torrents of abuse and personal attacks, 
marked by refined cruelty, upon him. One of them re- 
ferred to him as " His Honor !" in big capitals as if he had 
been a thief ; and as for the caricatures of him, they were 
past belief. I could not help telling him how I sympathized 
with him, but I was rather taken aback when he laughed 
heartily and said : " Oh, that doesn't amount to anything 
here." 

The Press 

Here, as in the smaller circle of my own experience, I see 
that the Press ruins its influence when it descends to vulgar 
personalities. It is a recommendation for a man to be 
attacked by a bad newspaper. Nevertheless, the Press 
can still do a great amount of harm. That of Denver needs 
to moderate its tone. When I was there, it was always out 
for trouble and was given over to heated arguments and 
conflicts of all kinds, local, national and international. 
The public will eventually tire of being constantly stirred 
up in this way, but, in the meantime, it may be made to 
lose its self-control sufficiently to cause some irreparable 
calamity to grow out of a misunderstanding or a mere 
falsehood. 

The public is not supplied with information that is 
sufficiently correct and disinterested to protect it against 



COLORADO 119 

a scare kept up by a few newspapers in combination with 
a stock-manipulating coup. This is the danger of our time. 

The Legislature 

After the luncheon, I had the honor of being received at 
the capitol by the Colorado Legislature. I began by paying 
a visit to the governor. He had already made a hurried de- 
parture from the banquet so as not to miss any of his visitors. 
All day long his ofhce door is open to everybody. A skep- 
tical negro usher lets visitors pell-mell into the anteroom, 
where they wait their turn — electors, officials and tax- 
payers all together. Here an exception was made in my 
favor. I asked the governor the same question that I 
put to French statesmen : '^ How do you find time to work ? " 
His only answer was a vague gesture, and he hurried me 
into the great hall where the Senate, over which he presides, 
and the lower House were holding a joint meeting to greet 
me. On the way, he explained the general plan of the 
building. 

The capitol is magnificent. All the mineral wealth of a 
country abounding in mines and valuable quarries has 
been used in its construction. The architects wisely chose 
the site on high ground and built the capitol after a fine 
design inspired, as usual, by classic art. They made 
free use of all the different kinds of metal, marble, granite 
and onyx available. Various anthropological, mineralog- 
ical and zoological collections are fitted up in the basement, 
to the great advantage of the public, giving, as they do, 
immediate information to the traveler as to the history, 
the formation and the future of the country. All over 
America there is the same taste for museums and Hbraries. 
Their statistical departments and information bureaus 
are not archives only open to the few, but are so 
much practical assistance, available for every one. The 



I20 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

collections and official publications of all the United States 
are of incalculable value to agriculture. Every farmer is 
provided with practical information as to his crops, the 
kind of stock raising suitable to his locality, the best plans 
to be found in the world for housing stock and the best 
means of coping with drought, frost and other natural 
obstacles. Without this advice I should not have seen, as 
I did from the train, orchard after orchard in full flower, 
lit up and warmed by the blaze from thousands of pe- 
troleum cans. 

My first impression on entering the Denver capitol, and 
looking at the hall in which my colleagues of the Colorado 
parliament were assembled, was very different from what I 
experienced after familiar conversation with them. The 
Americans, though they are always trying to perfect them- 
selves, are still in their infancy as regards local parlia- 
mentary institutions. All the lack of restraint I have seen 
here will have vanished in less than ten years from now. 
To feel sure of this, one need only look at the marvels that 
have been accomplished in so short a time. 

As every one knows, each of the forty-eight states has 
its legislature, its senate and its house of representatives. 
The senators are elected for four years and the represen- 
tatives for only two years. All are elected by what is 
practically universal suffrage. The senators, being less 
numerous than the representatives, are elected by larger 
districts, and that is all the difference. The senate and 
the house of representatives unite to elect members of 
the United States senate, two for each state. ^ On the 
day of my visit it happened that the Colorado Legislature 
had to appoint a United States senator, and although the 
Democratic party had a considerable majority — two 

^ This system has been altered. The members of the Federal Senate, 
by a recent amendment to the Constitution, will be elected by universal 
suffrage. 



COLORADO 121 

thirds of the voters — they could not agree. The Demo- 
crats were divided into two equal parts, and the result was 
to split the Legislature into three sections and make it 
impossible to settle the matter. 

The accommodation provided for the combined sittings 
of senators and representatives is very good, but the 
sittings themselves are so badly organized that it is im- 
possible to arrive at satisfactory results. There is certainly 
a lack of dignity about the French parliament, when it is 
not compared with a good many others that are still worse, 
but I do not propose to give my Denver colleagues any peace 
until they put an end to the inconceivable torture they 
inflict on themselves by taking the spectators into their 
debates. Without exaggeration, I can say that respect for 
the rights of the elector is used as a pretext for making the 
elected work under unacceptable conditions. It is impos- 
ible to estimate the extent of the drawbacks that result 
from this state of things, not only for the general govern- 
ment of the country and indirectly for its neighbors, but 
also for the parliamentary system, which is made responsible 
for the abuses forced upon it. 

Electors are admitted to the hall in which the sitting is 
going on. I saw some walking about 'with women and 
children, or sitting along the wall near their senator or 
representative to see what he was doing. The newspaper 
men, of course, had a splendid time in this scene of disorder. 
They could give our cabinet attaches points. They walk 
about from one bench to another and go up and speak to 
the president. The vials of their wrath are ready to be 
poured out on the head of any one who is innocent enough 
to stand in their way. 

The members of the Legislature themselves do like the 
rest. They take things easily, smoke and lean back in their 
chairs with their feet on their desks. Shades of great 
debates in the British and French parliaments, how dim 



122 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and far away you seem ! The example set by the members 
is followed by the officials, including the "cheeky" boys 
employed (to save money) as ushers. Only the girl stenog- 
raphers and typewriters behave properly and are always 
ready for any member who wants to dictate a letter. The 
finest specimen of disregard for appearances was the prin- 
cipal secretary. This excellent man walked about in his 
shirt sleeves with a pipe in his mouth. 

Lady Members 

I managed to conceal my astonishment and begin my 
address, but I had to break off at the very beginning. I 
began by saying ''My dear colleagues" and I was about to 
add "Gentlemen" when I perceived four lady members, 
elected to the house of representatives, sitting opposite 
me. I stopped short, and resumed : "My dear colleagues, 
ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time that a member 
of the French parliament has had to say 'ladies' at the 
commencement of an address to foreign colleagues. This 
in itself is a revolution.'' 

These opening remarks were very warmly received, and 
the rest of the address may be imagined. Afterward I 
went into the body of the hall, like an ordinary American 
elector, and introduced myself to my feminine colleagues. 
Here again I had to get rid of my European prejudices. 
The conversation caused me pleasure and even emotion. 
One of the ladies was a farmer and managed a large butter 
and cream concern. She represented the country Republi- 
can interest. Another was a Democrat who had been 
reelected three times. She was a widow and had lost her 
son in the war with Spain. She was a city member and 
was intensely interested in educational questions. She 
introduced me to the school superintendent, a very pretty 
woman who spoke with such seriousness and was so evi- 



COLORADO 



123 



dently impressed by the importance of her duties that I 
could only look and listen with equal surprise. 

When I talked as long as possible, the president amicibly 
notified me that it was time to leave, as the sitting was to 
continue with closed doors, whereby I learned that my un- 
fortunate colleagues were at any rate allowed some breath- 
ing time. Meeting the ladies again soon afterwards, I 
could not help asking them how they could endure their 
male colleagues' habit of smoking and putting their feet up. 
They looked at me in mild surprise at my innocence, and 
rephed: ''We must give the men some hberty if we are 
to get anything out of them!" after which they showed 
me a long Hst of useful measures passed into law through 
their influence. 

The Chief Justice 

Before leaving the capitol, which is the headquarters of the 
judicial as well as of the executive and legislative authority, 
I asked permission to pay my respects to the head of the 
Supreme Court ; and here again I had to get rid of another 
set of preconceived ideas. I wondered what sort of man an 
elected judge was Hkely to be in such surroundings. I had 
been surprised to find so much solid worth, sincerity and 
talent in the governor, and I was prepared to find less to 
approve of in a magistrate elected by universal suffrage — a 
new idea for me. The governor took me to a very quiet, 
British-looking study that reminded me of some peaceful 
retreat at Oxford or Cambridge. A man of very gentle 
and refined manners rose and came to meet me. We had 
a long conversation. He has been Chief Justice for ten 
years and is invariably reelected and respected. On 
asking how such a state of things came to be possible, I 
was told that it was simple enough. Each party is respon- 
sible for its candidates, and when one of them proves 
unequal to his position, his party has to suffer for it. 



124 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

An interesting detail is that the Chief Justice became 
deaf and was on the point of giving up office because 
he could hear neither witnesses nor counsel. Thanks to a 
marvelous little electric machine, connected by two wires 
to a sort of headpiece, — which he put on, with apologies, 
when I entered his room, — he can now hear as well as 
anybody, and better than a great many people. 

I shall certainly be sorry to leave Denver. It fortifies 
one^s confidence in humanity. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INEVITABLE WAR 

I. Japan Premeditating War? Let us study the danger. A soap 
bubble. — 2. The Worst Hypotheses. A. The United States 
attack Japan. B. Japan attacks the United States. — 3. The 
Empire of the Ocean : An Anachronic Dream. 

I. Japan Premeditating War? 

I SAID that I had hardly landed in New York when people 
began to say to me: ''You have chosen a fine time for 
your visit! we are about to have war between the United 
States and Mexico ! " I went on, and I came back with the 
firm conviction that, whatever might be the difficulties of 
the future, neither the government nor the people of the 
United States would ever commit the folly of declaring war 
against their Mexican neighbors. (I will not repeat what 
I said in Chapter II about that.) 

But the pessimists insisted and, explaining confidentially 
and patriotically to me that the real danger was not Mexico 
but Japan, they added : Japanese people are very patient, 
they have been premeditating and they are preparing their 
war, their coup, what we call now the attaque brusquee. 
They have their numerous agents, their spies everywhere 
in Mexico as in California or in the Hawaiian islands; 
their trap is laid just now on the Mexican frontier, but it 
is in Tokio that the inevitable danger is lying. 

Let us Study the Danger 

Very well ! we accept this dramatic warning. In order to 
take it seriously, let us study at first hand the specter which 

125 



126 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

is held up to terrify us : in order to understand it better, let 
us visit the places which should show the danger most 
clearly — Arizona, California, Oregon, Utah and Colorado. 
In these the Japanese are relatively the most numerous. 
Here national unrest and susceptibility might well be 
aroused, as the Japanese are found in larger and larger 
numbers in the universities, in the hotels, learning English, 
traveling about and studying the United States. It is 
true that the Japanese government, far from encouraging 
emigration, as is generally supposed, is working in the oppo- 
site direction and placing great obstacles in its path. 
Every emigrant is subjected, to the most rigorous tests, and 
the departure of farm hands and laborers — in a word, of 
the least educated Japanese — is specifically forbidden. 
Japan does not wish to send her lower classes abroad. It is 
a point of pride with her to permit the departure of those 
citizens only who are capable of doing her honor and of 
profiting by their travels. The educated young men, 
graduates of her universities, who travel abroad are, as 
is the case in Germany, happily excused from compulsory 
military service on the condition of having had at least 
thirteen years of schooling and of having passed all their 
examinations in military proficiency, and in general having 
shown themselves capable of success in life. 

This explains the relatively slight immigration of Japanese 
into the United States. It is none the less true that the 
young Japanese who do come might well be objects of 
suspicion to the Americans, who are daily incited against 
them by a section of the Press. This, however, is not the 
case in the universities, where they are treated as comrades, 
and where, if they are poor, they are given the same oppor- 
tunities for self-support as are open to American students. 
More than once I have seen young Japanese in the house- 
hold service of university presidents and professors. Out- 
side of the universities and hotels, you see them on every 



THE INEVITABLE WAR 1 27 

hand, serious, thoughtful, obviously above their present 
temporary occupations. It would not be hard to imagine 
that they are spies. This is more than enough to form the 
basis for irritation and suspicion of their presence in the 
United States. It is for this reason that I came to study 
the question at first hand rather than from books. 

As I came into occasional relation and into intimate and 
confidential touch with those who are in a position to give 
me light, as in Texas, I did not hesitate to ask questions. I 
exposed my convictions and observations to daily tests by 
the pubHc and the Press. In every one of my lectures I 
set forth impartially the two points of view, that of the 
alarmists and the opposite. I discussed the question under 
the most diverse circumstances, in personal chats and be- 
fore large audiences in pubHc meetings widely heralded in 
the daily papers. I have addressed men of affairs, teachers, 
labor organizations and students. My lectures have 
been in colleges, churches, clubs, before chambers of com- 
merce, state governors and legislatures. The more im- 
portant papers have published my arguments and given 
every opportunity to any one who, in the interests of his 
country or in the interests of truth, might desire to make 
an effective reply to them. I do not think that I lost a 
single opportunity of bringing to light whatever of truth 
there might be in the United States regarding this legend of 
the Japanese peril ; and now, as I bring to an end my 
long campaign through the Far West, I can conscientiously 
state that I have not found a single serious trace of alarm. 

A Soap Bubble 

I have, indeed, in a few rare cases, in fragmentary after- 
dinner conversations, heard transient notes of agitation 
and alarm, but alarm about what? About everything: 
yesterday, Mexico ; to-day, Japan ; to-morrow, Germany. 



128 - AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

For the alarmists have turned their attention, for the mo- 
ment, from Japan to Germany. As I passed through Denver 
my eye was caught by the huge, sensational headhnes about 
the ''next war of the United States," no longer with Japan, 
but with Germany. To-day it is Germany which is to 
seize Mexico ; Germany guided by the signally successful 
experience there of my own country ! 

All this proves how little reliance can be placed in these 
alarms of war. If no one takes them seriously, they fall 
of their own weight. I have more than once compared the 
talks of war between the United States and Japan to a soap 
bubble. If one wished, the bubble could be burst by a 
cannon shot, but who would wish or would permit that shot 
to be fired? The possibility of a war between Japan and 
the United States is not conceivable unless one is willing 
to suppose the two governments equally stupid, the two 
nations equally blind, and the world at large indifferent 
to their joint absurdity. 

2. The Worst Hypotheses. A. The United States attack 

Japan 

Let us study the worst hypotheses: In the first place, 
let us conceive the United States attacking Japan and being 
victorious all along the fine, by sea and by land. As we 
are merely supposing, let us not hesitate. In the second 
place, let us suppose that Japan, on the contrary, should 
attack the United States, and that her triumph by sea, on 
land and, as has been suggested, in the upper air, should 
be complete. 

Let us consider the first case. Can we conceive such 
folly, such crime, such weakness, such incapacity in a 
government which would repudiate its traditions, its 
policy, its good faith, which would bring its own develop- 
ment to an abrupt close, would compromise its future and 



THE INEVITABLE WAR 1 29 

wreck its very existence for the sake of a war in which, 
were the nation victorious, she could not receive any 
advantage and from which the whole world, on the other 
hand, can to-day foresee disastrous consequences? One 
cannot do the United States the injustice of beheving 
that, after having given to the world the example and the 
signal of vigorous devotion to the work of the Hague con- 
ferences, its government would ever take such a step. To 
argue on the supposition that the United States will ever 
be attacked with such an epileptic seizure is to assume the 
suicide of a great nation as a normal happening. 

The objection would be made, it is true, that some acci- 
dent would do the mischief: a second Maine, for exam- 
ple; perhaps an American admiral, without instructions 
and on his own responsibiHty, might see fit to fire upon a 
Japanese vessel in the harbor of Manila or Honolulu ; a 
single premature shot, as at Navarino, fired against orders, 
and the battle would be on, and the national honor, the 
national flag, would be at stake. Without hesitation, with- 
out reflection, without thought, America would follow her 
flag. If such a thing could be, I ask what more terrible 
indictment can be made against the policy of a huge navy 
which, not content with employing the youthful energy 
of the citizens, is shown forth in a time of peace as the sole 
possible cause of war. Would any one to-day bring up as 
an argument in favor of armaments the example of the 
Russian fleet on its way to China, in 1904, when at Dogger 
Bank it gave excuse for a war with England, superadded 
to the one which Russia was then waging against Japan ? 
And this war would actually have taken place had not the 
two governments, fortunately controlled by public opinion, 
been able to avoid the conflict by an appeal to the Hague 
conventions. 

An attack upon Japan by the United States under pre- 
tense of avoiding an imaginary danger would have no other 



130 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

result than the strengthening of Japan. War does not 
change geography. No victory of the United States could 
result in the shrinking up of the ocean ! A defeated Japan 
would be no less inaccessible on the other side of the Pacific. 
Apparently humihated by the American triumph, she would 
be raised to the role of victim and later to that of avenger. 
She would grow in moral strength, both in her own eyes and 
in Asia at large. She would become a champion of the 
right, the defender of the yellow race against the white. 
The solidarity of the most thickly populated continent 
of the world would give her the opportunity for a prompt, 
terrible and easy revenge. 

B. Japan attacks the United States 

A victory for the Americans could only open up an era of 
endless reprisals, which would ultimately bring economic 
and pohtical disaster to the United States. Let us not 
press the question, but let us rather turn to the hypothesis 
of a more or less artful attack upon the United States by 
Japan. ''You have seen," say my after-dinner alarmists, 
''only the most favorable samples of the Japanese. The 
real Japan is watching her chance to attack the United 
States. She also has her own Monroe Doctrine, 'Asia 
for the Asiatics,' and she will carry it out. That is her 
program, her aspiration, her only raison d^etre. The 
outrages committed daily upon her citizens or upon other 
Asiatics, not only in CaHfornia, but in AustraHa and else- 
where, are an insupportable humihation, to Japan a daily 
slap in the face. Japan says nothing, but she treasures 
them up in her memory ; she accumulates these affronts ; 
she is awaiting her chance ; and when that chance comes, 
keep your powder dry! Her army and her navy are ani- 
mated with religious fervor, they are well discipKned and 
have the tradition of success. Even supposing that the 



THE INEVITABLE WAR I3I 

Japanese Government might be inclined toward peace, 
it would finally be overwhelmed by public opinion and 
sooner or later obHged to give way, as have so many other 
governments in the history of the world, to the war fever 
spread by the army and the navy throughout the country." 

Let us stop for an instant before the picture of Japanese 
patriotism and courage, and observe in passing that these 
same alarmists who draw Japan as the most ardent and 
best trained of all the military states are the very same who 
solemnly state that peace will destroy the energy of a 
nation ; for it is through centuries of peace that Japan has 
steeped her courage and made ready her resistance to the 
armies and navies of Europe. But let us go back to our 
hypothesis. Japan has seized her chance. I admit that 
in taking possession of the Philippines, when they have so 
much to do at home, the United States made a mistake. 
They should make it their object to-day to insure as soon 
as possible, under the guarantee of the modern progress of 
international law, the neutrality of this too distant posses- 
sion. In the meantime it is here, as the alarmists truly 
say, and in the Hawaiian islands, that the United States 
are vulnerable, and it is upon these that Japan has her eye. 
At the outset, Japan, thoroughly informed by her omnipres- 
ent spies, seizes the Philippines — a trifling task for her — and 
the Hawaiian islands with their 80,000 resident Japanese — 
an easier task. This done, she presses her advantages. 
She threatens the Isthmus of Panama. She threatens San 
Francisco. She seizes the spoils of war. She establishes 
Gibraltars in Cahfornia and Mexico. In a word, she be- 
comes the mistress of the Pacific, the mistress of half the 
world, neither more nor less. 

The vision is tempting enough. I am wilHng to believe 
that among the Japanese jingoes, as among jingoes every- 
where, it is easy to find applause for such a program. In 
France we know this kind of applause only too well, and 



132 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

what Jules Ferry has called ' ' les Saint A maud de cafe concerts ^ 
Imitations of these wretched caricatures exist in every land. 
Why, indeed, should not Pan-Japanism have its votaries, 
like Pan- Germanism, Pan-Hellenism, or Pan-Islamism ? 
But uproar is not a poHtical program. Let us imagine 
Japan blind enough to start upon this career. And let 
us imagine her with enough money. Where will she stop 
and how can she stop? Let us suppose that in due time 
she attacks the United States. In spite of the efforts and 
the resources of her diplomacy, no matter what may be the 
situation in Europe, she will in so doing threaten England, 
the British Empire. No secret treaty, no mysterious 
clause, has weight against a plain fact such as this, against 
such a march of events. To-day the treaty does not exist 
which would hold two governments against the will of 
the peoples whom they represent. 

To seize the Philippines from America would be to threaten 
the British settlements in Asia, from Singapore to Shanghai ; 
the French, from Saigon to Hanoi ; the Russian, from Vladi- 
vostok to Siberia ; the Dutch in Java and Sumatra ; the 
German colonial possessions.^ It would threaten the in- 
tegrity of Austraha. It is indeed a fine program which we 
are suggesting for Japanese chauvinism, a program well 
worthy of chauvinism in general. Nor would Japan find 
help from Asia should she herself be the aggressor. If she 
should in her folly set herself against the whole world, she 
would find that her influence in China, now maintained 
with difficulty, would slip away. Her victory over the 
United States would spell her ruin. Any effort to monop- 
olize the Pacific Ocean, any absurd and untimely return 
to a Napoleonic dream of a universal blockade, could mean 
nothing for Japan but utter disaster. It would be a march 
to the abyss, to annihilation and not to mastery. 

1 Which exist no more as German possessions. (March, 1915.) 



THE INEVITABLE WAR 1 33 

3. The Empire oj the Ocean is an Anachronic Dream 

In our own interests, we must all see that the empire of the 
ocean is to-day but an idle dream. I cannot say too often 
that no single state can possibly be the mistress of the sea. 
The sea belongs to the world at large just as the heavens 
belong to aviation. No combination of diplomacy, no 
bowlings of the Press, can alter facts. War between the 
United States and Japan is impossible. Individual acts 
of folly are unpreventable, just as are assaults and murders 
in every country, in spite of the arm of the law. The 
question is to know whether we have to organize the world 
under a normal condition of justice or on the assumption 
that murder is the rule.^ 

1 In reality the only war truly inevitable is one which the governments 
believe to be inevitable — a war for which they prepare under the pretext 
of thereby assuring peace ! The present European war could have been 
avoided by confidence and accord between the great Powers. It was 
rendered inevitable by suspicion and by the increase of armaments. 
(March, 191 5.) 



CHAPTER VIII 

LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 

I. The Capital of Nebraska. Life on board of the American 
railways; "staterooms," cooking. Lincoln or Omaha. The work of 
militias. Voluntary discipline. The pacific and patriotic doctrine. 
William Jennings Bryan. The Hague capital of new ideals. Ameri- 
can disinterestedness. France sower of seed. Alcoholism. Paris 
and pornography. Too many dogs and cats. Temperance. — 
2. Another New City. Kansas City. Agricultural center. 
Scarcity of labor. The 938 school teachers. The Press. French 
horses. The automobiles and the plucky girls. The Park. The 
Boulevards. The Missouri's failure. The floods. The lady who 
wants to know. The Knife and Fork Club. 

I MANAGED to extend my stay at Denver by twenty-four 
hours and shut myself up in my room, though my friends 
thought I had gone. I was so saturated with impressions 
that I felt the need of shutting out everything for a time. 
When people and places pass before our eyes too quickly, 
our vision becomes blurred, questions cease to state them- 
selves plainly, and life becomes nothing better than a whirl- 
ing cinematograph. In addition to retirement, which is often 
difficult to obtain in a hotel, I enjoy the rest on the trains. 

Life on Board of the American Railroads 

I left Denver at nine o'clock at night, but remained shut up 
in my stateroom or cabin until next day at noon. These 
cabin (staterooms) are all alike, and in every one of them 
I have my favorite corner and arrange things after my own 
fashion. I make myself absolutely at home and let nobody 

■ 134 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY I35 

in, — not even the colored porter, — so that I can arrange 
my plans without interference and put my mental house 
in order. 

Americans burn the candle at both ends. They are 
splendid organizers and understand everything except the 
value of lost time ! Continually busy as they are over 
smoothing out rough places and overcoming natural ob- 
stacles, they are unacquainted with three elements which are 
indispensable to happiness and success ; I mean silence, 
solitude and sadness. Compare their intense activity 
with Russian nonchalance, for instance, and tell me if that 
apparent nonchalance, with its resigned acceptance of 
long winters and long nights, does not bear fruit in the 
shape of masterpieces of art and thought. 

I have found something reposeful even in the food on the 
American dining cars. I was rather alarmed at the pros- 
pect of several months' railroad travel and especially of the 
cooking, which, to a Frenchman born with a cook's palate, 
ought to have time and care given to it ; but I was mistaken. 
All that was necessary was a Httle firmness. The ice, pro- 
vided in abundance all over the United States, also helped 
a great deal. It is a surprise, even for the most exacting 
stomachs, to find plenty of fresh cream, in the South as well 
as in the North. It is served as milk is with us, but more 
freely, and is purer. It is produced at every meal, as are 
all sorts of fruit, such as grapefruit, strawberries, bananas, 
oranges and apples. The last-named, being easy to keep 
and send from place to place, are becoming the national 
fruit of the United States. The luscious, golden-brown, 
wrinkled, baked apple can be had in every dining car and 
railroad restaurant, and its hygienic quaUties are invaluable 
to the traveler. Add to these, plainly cooked vegetables 
which are necessarily not ''faked," such as potatoes and rice 
(the negroes cook these very well), plain soups, porridge with 
cream, chickens (sometimes young) or pigeons, tea and ice- 



136 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

water, with very little wine, this being a country producing 
scarcely any, and you have a diet warranted to cause not 
even a headache. 

Thus restored to my usual serenity, I reached Lincoln, 
the young capital of the state of Nebraska. 

Lincoln or Omaha 

Lincoln is a paradox. I do not yet fully understand how 
it comes to be a capital. It has a comparatively small 
population, about 30,000. The principal city in Nebraska 
is Omaha, which has three or four times as many inhab- 
itants and is well known for its abattoirs and its commercial 
wealth. When it came to be decided which city should be 
the capital of Nebraska, Lincoln carried the day by a 
majority of only one. Since that time, the legislative, 
administrative and judicial life of the state has centered 
in this secondary place, just as Versailles, at a time, was 
preferred to Paris, Springfield to Chicago, Baton-Rouge to 
New Orleans and so on. 

The Work of the Militia 

I saw mihtia — the embryo of the national army which 
is lacking in the United States — for the first time at 
Lincoln. They were a very manly lot. Most of the young 
fellows belonged to the state university at which I spoke. 
They wore smart uniforms and carried out various move- 
ments under the command of a young captain. This officer 
greeted me very courteously and cordially, and spontane- 
ously declared himself a strong supporter of arbitration 
and peace. ''Our drill," he said, ''is a form of training 
necessary, not only for national defense, but for strengthen- 
ing our unity. Most of the boys in our schools are the sons 
of foreign fathers and mothers. They were away with 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY I37 

their parents on farms where they did not speak English 
but here they learn to Hve together, speak the same lan- 
guage and become part of a people which will be great if 
it is united but a failure if it is divided against itself. In 
combination with the universities and athletic sports, our 
budding militia are schools for voluntary discipHne and 
union. For these reasons we cordially approve of your 
endeavors to spread a uniform doctrine of patriotism and 
peace throughout our country, and you can count us among 
your sincerest supporters." 

Pacific and Patriotic Doctrine 

I replied that the French were obliged by their past and 
by the present state of Europe to regulate their mihtary 
organization more or less by that of their neighbors, but 
that nowhere was there a better comprehension of the 
double duty of defending to the uttermost not only the 
fatherland but right and justice, without which peace, 
constantly threatened as it is, would be a mere mockery. 
'' Show Europe," I added, '' that you love peace just as much 
as your country, and no one will dream of attacking you. 
You will become invulnerable, and your example will make 
any revival of the old-style war of conquest impossible. 
The good organization of the United States is one of the 
conditions of universal peace." 

These sentiments, which are understood everywhere, are 
those of every state in the Union. I have expressed them, 
in different forms, before over a hundred audiences, and 
particularly to young people. I have, in fact, addressed a 
nation. 

William Jennings Bryan 

My route being strictly mapped out, I could not be at 
Lincoln at the same time as my friend WilHam Jennings 



138 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Bryan. He was kind enough to join me a little farther on, 
at Chicago, but I was very sorry to miss him at Lincoln. 
He was in the South, carrying on a campaign similar to 
mine. I had to confine myself to paying a visit to his 
home, which was hospitable even in his absence. 

He Hves in an elegant villa on top of a hill at some dis- 
tance from the town. I went there by automobile, through 
a woodless but fertile country and over roads that were 
not worthy the name, I must say ! I admire the strength 
of American men, and especially American women, and 
also of the motor springs that can hold out against such 
steeplechasing. Of course a new country is something 
like a plot in the builders' hands, and the roads are attended 
to when everything else is finished. America is still in the 
rut period.^ Perhaps the roads helped to keep me in good 
health by providing me with exercise. 

The life of Mr. William Jennings Bryan, fike those of 
his successful competitors for the presidency of the United 
States, Messrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Taft, testifies to 
the need for organization and stability that manifests itself 
here in all directions. All three have strongly supported 
the Hague institution, and not without merit to themselves. 
Let there be no mistake about it : a narrow mind might 
think that the national interest of America was not to 
situate the universal capital of equity and the final ex- 
pression of human justice in Europe. Why should such 
a capital of new ideals be in the old world and not in the 
new? The government of the United States showed a 
great deal of political instinct, but also a certain amount 
of abnegation, when it agreed to show Europe the way to 
the Hague ; and I am surprised that Americans, who are 
constantly accused of having no ideals, have never thought 
of drawing attention to this evident proof of their own 

^ This, of course, does not apply to many roads I have enjoyed near such 
centers as New York, Boston, Washington, or certain mihtary roads. 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 1 39 

disinterestedness. The movement in favor of interna- 
tional justice in the United States is a national and 
moral movement. It is a complement to the national 
education, and is a meeting ground for all who think 
of the future. The widely different elements brought 
into America by emigration from abroad cannot be fused 
into a homogeneous state without education, material and 
moral progress. All kinds of rival regions are to be met 
with on the American continent, and if they cannot be 
brought together by a higher morality, common ideal or 
public spirit, the result will be anarchy. Americans pos- 
sess this public spirit in the highest degree. 

France — Sower of Seed 

This is why they are grateful to France as the sower of 
seed in the form of humane ideas. Her history, her great 
men and even the disasters she has suffered appeal to 
the world at large, and she carries on a work of universal 
education. At Lincoln, far from Europe and far from every- 
where, I was the guest of a family that was French in 
spirit, and I had yet another opportunity of seeing the 
affection inspired by our country in a great many timid and 
unknown foreigners who turn their eyes towards her despite 
all the ill, and perhaps on account of the ill, that is said 
of us. The same minds that disdain newspaper attacks on 
individuals undertake to rehabilitate over-calumniated na- 
tions in esteem ; and the ill will back of the criticisms that 
are leveled at our efforts and struggles has certainly placed 
a great many people on our side. 

"Above all, do not be discouraged'^ was the remark 
made to me by a Lincoln man — a great traveler and very 
well informed. ''France,'' he continued, "is attacked be- 
cause she is always stirring up ideas, making people aspire 
to something better and keeping them mentally on the 



I40 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

move. She is always interfering with routine, abuses and 
accepted errors. This is what constitutes her greatness. 
If she lets herself be disconcerted by the noise of her own 
activity, she will be giving up the part she has to play in 
the world. Lincoln is not the only place where this view is 
held ; you have observed it elsewhere and will observe it 
every day. France exercises a sort of fascination in places 
as widely separated as Australia, India and South America. 
If only you could realize it ! The thoughts and imagination 
of the entire world are your clients. At least eighty Lin- 
coln families spend their vacations in France every year. 
My own children have lived two years at Tours. And 
what does Lincoln amount to? You have only to multiply 
the number I have just mentioned by that of a great many 
other and larger cities. There is not a single new town, 
separated though it may be from you by thousands and 
thousands of miles, that does not turn its thoughts towards 
Paris, send you its best men and women, and come to you 
to spend its savings and lay in a supply of what makes for 
comfort, taste and refinement, especially the last. The 
French ought to be made to understand that the world is 
becoming more and more refined, and is coming to Paris 
for its models. Why? Because the Frenchman is im- 
pulsive, critical, witty and, above all, hvely. Don't lose 
your liveliness ! Only pedants and fools fail to realize the 
depth of French gayety. It is as charming and captivat- 
ing as a woman smiling through her tears or a rainbow in a 
storm. It calls up whatever is sweetest and strongest 
in the soul. To the world it is a source of regeneration, 
or what we call an inspiration. Morose critics may cavil, 
but all the better for you ; we love to shock them. French 
gayety attracts us because it is so closely aUied to enthu- 
siasm. Do not let your wings be chpped. Was it not 
your Michelet who said that no one can do good work 
except in a cheerful spirit? You create masterpieces, be- 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 141 

cause your cheerfulness is a soul- triumph, born of anguish. 
Continue to be bold, enterprising, and intrepid; go on 
giving the world explorers, submarine navigators, aviators, 
scientists, orators, poets, actors, artists, adventurers, 
strivers after the unattainable, Cyranos de Bergerac, 
d'Artagnans, Bleriots or Pasteurs. Hold fast to your ideals. 
'''When I say 'Do not let your wings be clipped,* I refer 
to more than one danger that has to be avoided. Because 
you were beaten in 1870, some people would like to material- 
ize you and give you a distaste for the chimeras that have 
ennobled and enriched you. There is more than one sign 
that makes this evident to your real friends. You have 
everything to lose and nothing to gain by the change." 

Alcoholism 

''For instance, all sorts of little weaknesses, which it 
would be easy to overcome, are contributing to the spread 
of the liquor habit, and it is a great pity. To make the 
Frenchman into a drunkard is like killing a rara avis or 
spoiling its voice and destroying its gracefulness and its 
song. Everybody can be drunk, but everybody cannot be 

gay." 

Paris and Pornography 

"It is the same with pornography. To please a certain 
number of dissolute cosmopolitan clients, reduced to the 
lowest forms of vulgarity, you give up your speciality — 
gracefulness. This is inexcusable. Everybody can be 
coarse, but not everybody can be refined. For the sake of 
this low patronage from people who will come back to you 
in any case, because they must have change, you either 
divert the inflow of a vast family clientele or lose it. Swit- 
zerland is cleverer than you, and so are England and Ger- 
many. I do not say they are better than you ; on the con- 



142 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

trary, I believe in the honesty and scrupulous probity of 
the Frenchman and Frenchwoman. Your RepubHcan 
government has really too much of the red-heel-shoe or 
the Directoire period about it. It gives so much rope 
that it makes democratic vices out of what used to be hidden 
in the time of Louis XV and his favorites. The influence 
of this makes itself felt in everything, and the result is 
general moral slackness. You object to the temporary 
obstruction due to the Metropolitan Railway works in 
Paris, but you allow your boulevards to be permanently 
degraded by scattered handbills, professional beggars and 
touts. You put up with the evil-smelling little conven- 
iences that gape cynically at you from every sidewalk. 
Still, why should we stop to bother about such things when 
we are so glad to be in Paris ? And yet we cannot venture 
to go to the theater without risk of seeing actors in their 
underwear and actresses in their chemises, if not less ! 
Your newspaper stalls, on the streets and in the railroad 
depots, are under the control of your all-powerful public 
administration, which licenses them and derives profit 
from their business, and yet they are allowed to display 
obscene publications, less to the injury of passing strangers 
than to that of France^s own children — young workmen 
and workwomen, for whom there is no protection and who 
are brutalized instead of being helped and lifted out of 
the mire. One of the finest of nations is being poi- 
soned, weakened and depopulated. What a pity ! There 
must be a marvelous hidden reserve of good in France 
after all to get the better of this superficial layer of filth !" 

I thanked him, and told him he had said what I had 
been saying in parliament for years. He continued : 

*' France is the world's garden — the promised land. 
You have a splendid past ; and think of your landscapes, 
castles, cathedrals and museums. Noblesse oblige ! With 
a small outlay — which would pay for itself over and over 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 143 

again, in upkeep and cleanliness, — you could double the 
number of travelers who come to France. You have plenty 
of able men, — men who can govern, — but you have 
not enough government, and every one takes advantage of 
it. Public spirit in France has been paralyzed by cen- 
turies of obedience and does not seem to have awakened 
yet, and in the meantime the administration of public 
affairs has gone to sleep. The one relies on the other, and, 
at this rate, a change will be a long time coming.^' 

"Not so long as one might think," I replied. "The 
great movements of public opinion spread rapidly nowadays, 
and the knowledge of what affects the general interest is no 
longer confined to the few. We are already having frequent 
fits of ill temper which sometimes take the form of disgrace- 
ful violence but are all the more significant. At the same 
time we see perfectly orderly crowds at aviation meetings. 
You must leave us time either to govern ourselves or make 
the public powers understand that we want to be governed." 

Too Many Dogs and Cats 

"Very well, then, let's take our time and not worry!" 
he exclaimed, with quite Gallic gayety ; "but, in the mean- 
time, couldn't you help to thin out the really excessive 
number of dogs and cats you have in France?" 

The Americans are very strong on this point, like the 
English. They are by no means wanting in affection for 
domestic animals, which they treat even better than we do 
(I have seen dogs' dentists in America) ; but they con- 
sider, and not without reason, that the friend of man is 
intrusive and dangerous when he is left to wander about. 

Temperance 

Having delivered my address at the university, I left 
Lincoln after a very fine banquet held in my honor. It is 



144 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

common enough for ice water to be the only drink at Ameri- 
can banquets, and the rule is strictly observed here. Before 
I made my speech, I thoughtlessly asked the negro waiter 
to put a drop of whisky in my glass. He gave me such a 
look that I still turn hot all over when I think of it ! I asked 
my next-door neighbor for an explanation. "Such tem- 
perance at a dinner surprises you," he said, smiling, "and 
you are inclined to think it is hypocritical ; but it is a very 
wise rule, and you will see other examples of it. We are 
in a new country where every one is overworked and no 
wine is grown ; and if, instead of setting an example of 
temperance, we were to begin drinking spirits, where would 
our workmen and our young men stop? The cocktail is 
insidious.'^ 

2. Another New City. Kansas City 

In describing Kansas City I do not want to be unfaith- 
ful to Seattle, Denver and all the other new cities, where 
one is received with open arms, as young people who have 
Just set up housekeeping welcome a visit from their 
grandparents. All the same, I must confess that I am in 
another " hub of the universe." It is a very fine thing to 
have a town grow up under one's eyes and to see nothing 
beyond it, but I find it hard to get accustomed to the speed 
and self-confidence with which these places in America are 
developed. How could it be otherwise with one who 
comes from a country with so much history, the valley of 
the Loire, which has suffered so much, has seen so many 
expectations and disappointments, so many tears and so 
much bloodshed and so many masterpieces created and 
destroyed ? 

But for its happy state of mind, Kansas City might be 
inclined to complain of its location, a long way from the 
Atlantic and the Pacific and from both the northern and 
southern frontiers of the United States. Quite the con- 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 145 

trary ; the farther away the city is, the more it considers 
itself necessary to the others. The wider grows the diameter 
of the circle of which Kansas City is the center, the more 
wealth it receives and distributes. To-day it is a city of 
250,000 inhabitants. Its population has increased by 
100,000 in ten years. It makes me think of a similar 
place in France, also located in the heart of the country 
and in a rich agricultural district, and on a great river. It 
was once a residence of kings and the seat of the court of 
France. It is still celebrated for its castle, but in all other 
respects it is asleep and moss grown. What a contrast! 
Kansas City is one of those new capitals that think nothing 
is beyond their reach and are quite persuaded that they 
are the source and the goal of everything. The city is 
served by eighteen railroad companies with thirty-four 
lines, to say nothing of the river traffic, estimated (as the 
city advertisements say) as the future equivalent of a 
hundred railroads running themselves and costing nothing. 
Kansas City has coal for its railroads and steamers. For 
its factories it has something even better than coal — pe- 
troleum, and especially natural gas, close at hand, on the 
very banks of the Kansas and issuing from the earth through 
numerous wells, entirely separate from one another. The 
cattle pens and abattoirs can compare with those of Chicago. 
I saw enough of the latter ten years ago to dispense with 
paying a visit to the same kind of thing here. It is a re- 
pulsive sight, and I have already described it quite suffi- 
ciently.^ 

Agricultural Center 

Kansas City is an agricultural center. Its scientific corn 
farming gives most remarkable results. A man could 
easily lose himself in one of these immense harvest fields. 
It is a sight to see reaping machines with teams of ten, 

* See the files of Le Journal Flechois of 1902. La Fleche (Sarthe). 

L 



146 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

twenty or thirty horses cut down great sHces of wheat, 
separate the grain from the straw and turn a forest of wheat 
in a few hours into a desert of stubble. On still larger 
estates, a farmer told me, the reaping machines leave the 
straw and cut off only the ear, which is thrashed and put 
into sacks as the machine goes on. The straw back of 
them is set on fire, after which the ground is plowed and 
sown by other steam machinery, so as to reduce the amount 
of labor to the minimum. This, however, is nothing new, 
no more than apples hand-gathered in thousands, packed 
on the spot and sent off to the nearest station without pass- 
ing through farm or store. Apricots, plums, almonds and 
peaches, fresh or dried, are treated in the same way, as in 
California, in Oregon, etc. 

French Horses 

There is a great influx of raw material to Kansas City: 
notably gold, silver and copper from Montana and Wyo- 
ming ; zinc and lead from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, 
oats from Iowa ; hay, cattle, hogs, sheep, horses and mules 
from all adjoining or distant states, including horses from 
France. During the past twenty years I have observed a 
great increase in the business of exporting French horses 
to the United States from the Maine and especially the 
Perche districts. I have known our breeders to sell unborn 
colts for as much as two hundred dollars apiece. I see the 
descendants of these colts here and everywhere, but an- 
other privilege of France is that neither our horses, seeds 
nor plants can maintain their good qualities abroad, much 
less perpetuate them. They have to be regularly renewed 
in France, and I may remark in parenthesis that it takes a 
good deal of perseverance to carry on the process, seeing 
how complicated the export of horses is made in France, 
owing, as usual, to the absence of properly organized means 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 147 

of transport. This at any rate is what I am told by Ameri- 
can buyers, and I know only too well that they are not 
exaggerating. A French horse bought at La Ferte-Bernard 
or Nogent-le-Rotrou cannot be sent direct to any French 
port. It has to go first to Paris and then to Havre, where 
there is not a single line of boats properly fitted up to take 
horses across the Atlantic. The animal has to be shipped 
across the Channel to England, the only country possess- 
ing large cargo steamers of the Minneapolis type. One 
wonders how a young horse can be conveyed from the 
green meadows, where he was raised and left to run about 
as he pleased, to his destination on the other side of the 
ocean. It is quite surprising to find that he generally gets 
there safe and sound. 

This is an instance of the defective way in which things 
are organized in France. What is France^s loss is Eng- 
land's gain. Neither Kansas City nor any neighboring 
state wastes time over such details. Nothing is allowed to 
interfere with their progress or check their vitality, which 
hurry along with bewildering speed. There is a constant 
increase in the number of banks, the extent of their 
operations and the total deposits. It is even asserted that 
labor is cheaper and better here than elsewhere. For this 
there are several reasons. Extra help can be summoned 
from all points of the compass, and, if there is a shortage of 
workmen, a few telegrams to the right quarters will have 
the desired effect. Secondly, the city spends a great deal 
on public education. It is calculated that the money in- 
vested in schools decreases the number of vagabonds, 
drunkards and criminals, produces better workmen and 
makes them better citizens. Education brings them more 
happiness and increases the value of their labor. Out- 
bursts of discontent, such as strikes, are less frequent and 
are easier to settle. This state of things may perhaps be 
because the demand for labor in a new city is so great that 



148 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

there is comparatively little hesitation about paying high 
wages, which are put down as capital outlay, whereas in 
an old city they count as upkeep and are paid out of revenue. 
The difference is considerable. Some of my obhging 
Kansas City organizers, who are so skilled in the art of 
proving that their city is the industrial capital and strategic 
center of the New World's suppHes, have provided me with 
the following figures, which I give entirely on their authority : 
An ordinary laborer, who is paid 23 or 24 cents an hour at 
Chicago, gets only 19 at Kansas City; a workman in one 
of the building trades, who is paid 29 or 30 cents an hour 
at Chicago, can command only 20 at Kansas City, and so 
on. 

The 938 School-teachers 

It is easy to understand that these agricultural, indus- 
trial and mining states, all in process of development, 
want a national poHcy that makes for stabiHty, and conse- 
quently the reception extended to me at Kansas City was 
particularly cordial. Several months before my arrival, 
I saw that things would be well done at Kansas City, and 
in no half-hearted fashion. Even before I left France, in 
February, I received a letter informing me that the Kansas 
City school superintendent had given the 938 school-teachers 
in the city a day's vacation for April 20, the date of my 
lecture, so that they and their pupils could attend. On 
reaching Lincoln, twenty-four hours before I was due at 
Kansas City, I was met by two members of the reception 
committee, who attended the banquet at Lincoln and then 
took me to the railroad depot. They did not leave me until 
I reached the door of my stateroom, and there they were 
again next morning before we arrived. The more than cor- 
dial way in which I was received on the platform made me 
forget the short but uncomfortable night I had spent on 
the train. It was a rather sharp morning. Very fast and 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 1 49 

very open motor cars were waiting for us. One of my 
aides-de-camp seated himself at the steering wheel of one 
of these cars and drove off with me, quite cheerfully, with- 
out thinking it at all necessary to put on an overcoat, 
while I shivered under a heap of coats and rugs. I felt as 
if there were a good deal of old Europe about me just then ! 
My collapse, however, was only temporary. I was taken 
to a hotel and left in a sumptuous suite, where I began to 
wonder if I had not been changed into some one else on 
the way and if I were not Sarah Bernhardt in person ! 
On every table were lovely, sweet-smelling French roses, 
and many other signs of welcome and delicate attention. 
I was recalled to reality by the newspaper men and pho- 
tographers. 

The Press 

Kansas City has a great many newspapers, one of which 
has a circulation of 260,000 while the others run to about 
150,000. I had only just satisfied these visitors and 
attended to my toilet and breakfast when the motor car 
was announced by telephone and I went down. 

The Automobiles and the Plucky Girls 

I must confess that I was rather scared by the Kansas 
City automobiles. As in the rest of the United States, 
the automobile business is an old one and rather the worse 
for wear. It is "bad business," as they say here. Every 
one makes motor cars and every one has one. They began 
by bringing cars over from France and then importing the 
parts and putting them together, and finally they were 
made everywhere. There are two kinds of automobiles 
here. One is a small electric car, some of them made 
in Germany and used principally by elderly or timid 
people. It is a coupe, or perhaps a landaulet, driven from 



150 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

inside by an old gentleman, a lady or a little girl. As a 
rule, however, the girls prefer the other kind — the big 
forty-horse-power petrol car. It is most alarming to see 
one of these thunderbolts rushing at you, nonchalantly 
driven by a child of fourteen, who looks pityingly at you, 
very much as you might look at a startled hen. You see 
the projectile fly along and pass your own automobile with 
a few inches to spare, and you have also the consciousness 
that you are wholly innocent and yet that if there were any 
accident the judge would be sure to decide in favor of the 
woman or child, who, knowing this, can run any risk ! 
This kind of thing is unsettling. People who come to 
Kansas City from Paris are clearly not up to date. I re- 
proach myself with it, for I have known Englishmen appoint 
mere boys as cashiers in great business houses — also a 
great responsibility. 

Arriving safe and sound at the hall where I was to speak, 
I found myself face to face, as in most of the cities on my 
tour, with the future of the United States — the school- 
teachers of to-day and to-morrow. There is nothing to 
equal the satisfaction of instructing instructors and giving 
light to those who have to enlighten others. Its effects are 
not immediately visible, but they are certain to come, and 
it is impossible to estimate their extent. Its effectiveness 
is apt to be ignored because it does not act at once, but it 
goes all the deeper. Such instruction finds its way into 
millions of minds, and reacts on generation after genera- 
tion, much more rapidly than is generally supposed. 

The Park, the Boulevards 

After my address, I was asked to deliver an extra one in 
the afternoon at the Shubert Theater for the ladies of 
Kansas City, and I was then taken to see the city and its 
parks and boulevards. It was a memorable drive. The 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 151 

city covers 58 square miles, and has 45 miles of boulevards 
and 324 miles of paved streets. It is just hilly enough to 
give its inhabitants the pleasure of building houses that 
get plenty of air. Its extension is in width and not in 
height, except the big hotels and a few immense buildings 
erected for the express purpose of centralizing an organiza- 
tion that can hardly be complete and up to date unless it 
serves a great number of people. Every one insists on 
having his own home and his own garden at Kansas City, 
just as people do in the majority of American and English 
towns. This system is facilitated by the electric tram- 
ways, and it costs no more nowadays to spread out on 
cheap land than to build story upon story, after the old 
style, on enormously costly lots. The business of house 
and land agents is most important in new cities. It is tre- 
mendously active here and is all the time at work trans- 
forming waste lots into residential districts, leveling hills, 
filling up valleys, creating local development associations 
and so on. The style of all these houses is graceful and 
varied. Quite a number of American architects study in 
France. They certainly profit by what they learn there. 
They adapt classical ideas to the requirements of numerous 
clients who dislike routine. The result is most satisfactory, 
but American domestic architecture certainly seems to be 
principally derived from English cottages and country 
houses. The parks here are large and numerous, as else- 
where, well laid out and connected with the city by fine 
avenues. One of the boulevards is built like a cornice 
along the face of a picturesque cliff overlooking the valley 
of the Missouri and is known as the Cliff Drive. Nature 
has given this cliff the appearance, color and relief of one 
of our medieval castles. Ivy and the fresh green vegeta- 
tion of spring grow among what might very well pass for 
imitations of ancient towers. It is the ruiniform escarp- 
ment, well known to geologists and often met with in 



152 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Europe. It might have been placed here for the express 
purpose of making a new promenade look as if it had a 
past. What luck the Kansas City real estate dealers have ! 

The Missouri's Failure 

I have not yet referred to the Missouri, and I can only 
call it a disappointment. Like the Loire, it is a river that 
has failed in its duty and has not lived up to its traditions. 
In all the cities I have visited on the banks of these mag- 
nificent rivers, they are scarcely thought of except as a 
cause of floods. I cannot help uttering yet another pro- 
test against such a waste of natural forces and such modern 
vandalism. Unless I am mistaken, the inhabitants of 
Kansas City took my reproach to heart. ''We agree with 
you," they said, ''but a movement is on foot, not only 
among our manufacturers and merchants, but among the 
public, for a return to river navigation, afforestation and 
all other questions that are essential to the development of 
our country. Subscriptions have even been opened in 
Kansas among workmen, workwomen, clerks and employees 
of both sexes, with a view to a revival of traffic on the 
Missouri. The subscription is a success, the movement 
has taken shape, and now it is only a question of time. 
Next time you come to see us, we will take you on the 
Missouri to St. Louis." 

The Lady who wants to Know 

The last banquet of the day (which was quite as busy as 
its predecessors) took place at my hotel. It was arranged 
by an influential body known as the Knife and Fork Club. 
There were at least five or six hundred guests, in the hall 
and annexes, and none of them were women ! Can I ven- 
ture to say that I was not sorry? There is a limit to 



LINCOLN. KANSAS CITY 1 53 

human endurance. To deliver three or four addresses 
every day for several months in succession is a form of 
physical exercise that calls for training, and still more for 
organization. Speaking and talking are not the same thing, 
and it is difficult for a speaker to hold forth for three 
quarters of an hour, after dinner, if he has done two hours' 
talking during the feast, and he cannot do otherwise if he 
has a lady next to him, especially when that lady is interest- 
ing. There are some women who excel in the art of ex- 
hausting a lecturer. They squeeze him like a lemon, after 
which they leave the remains for his hearers. Heaven 
preserve me from the enthusiastic woman who wants to 
know everything and has left you no time either to eat or 
to take breath before the chairman calls on you for your 
speech ! I have made up my mind to run away from her 
— or at least to denounce her, as there is no running away. 
She is to be found in all countries, and she never releases 
her prey. 

The Knife and Fork Club 

The members of the Knife and Fork Club hold banquets 
less for the sake of eating and drinking than meeting one 
another and getting acquainted with any new facts that 
may be useful to them. The dinner they gave me was the 
one hundred and second since the foundation of the club. 
After dessert, the waiters retire, the doors are closed, every- 
body draws up to the head table, lights his cigar and pre- 
pares to listen. Not a word is lost. A speech, especially 
by a foreigner, appeals to the members as a sight and an 
attraction as much as an opportunity to learn something. 
Galleries around the hall enable the members' wives and 
friends to hear what is said. No subject appeals more 
strongly to American audiences than the need of national 
expansion and developing of intercourse with the rest of 
the world. 



154 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Just before the close, the chairman, George H. Forsee, 
gave a mysterious sign that every one but myself under- 
stood. A large case was brought to him, and after thank- 
ing me for coming so far to tell them about France, he re- 
quested me, in terms that considerably touched me, to 
take home a souvenir of Kansas City ; and, as he opened 
the case to hand it to me, I saw that it contained a mighty 
silver knife and fork on which my name and the date, 
April 20, were engraved. I do not know what I said in 
reply, but I am quite sure that if ever I return to Kansas 
City, I shall find myself among friends, and this applies not 
only to myself but to all good Frenchmen whose repre- 
sentative and messenger for a day I was. 

And now for my room, my bag and my roses, and then 
the automobile, the depot and the train, wherein I say 
good-by to my guides, and so to sleep after a fashion, 
waking next morning at St. Louis. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 

I. New France. The Mississippi. I see Cavalier de La Salle 
passing. The martyrdom of our pioneers. The foundation of St. 
Louis. The treaties of Utrecht and of Paris. The selling of 
Louisiana. The funeral of the Flag. — 2. The Population, the 
Climate of the United States. AU kinds of climate. Floods 
and earthquakes. Peace necessary. Souvenirs of France. St. 
Louis exhibition. French and American idealism relatives 
but strangers. — 3. The French Spirit. The French Lan- 
guage. The country as it is. Mr. Robert Brookings. They do 
not dare speak foreign languages. Happy change. A French 
lesson. The lesson of the Hague. — 4. American Devotedness. 
The paradise of American hospitality. Human good will. 
Against skepticism. St. Louis, expansion. 

I. New France 

I WAS already up when, next morning, Friday, April 21, 
the ever smiling negro knocked on the door of my state- 
room and notified me that we were not far from St. Louis. 
Three nights in succession on the railroad had not contrib- 
uted to my physical repose — (not all the lines here are 
good ones, and the one I had to take at Lincoln to save 
time was quite one of the worst) — but I was still further 
from being mentally rested. Since leaving the Rocky 
Mountains behind me on my journey away from the Pa- 
cific, I had felt, not as if I were going further away but 
as if I were returning; and the first stage of this return 
journey to Europe was to St. Louis, the capital of French 
Louisiana. 

155 



156 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Louisiana ! The name has a sweet and yet painful sound 
to a French ear; it symbolizes so much beauty, so much 
strength of mind, so much heroism, so much of the clear- 
sightedness of genius, and, at the same time, so much moral 
hideousness, so much ineptitude, so much false wit and 
so much cowardice ; it sums up not only all the grandeur 
and misery of France, but the grandeur and misery of hu- 
manity at large, so well that the country of to-day vanished 
from my eyes and I saw nothing but its past. Without 
exaggeration I can say I saw La Salle at New Orleans. I 
could not refrain from tears when I found him still living 
in the memory of the Frenchmen I met ; I sympathized 
with him in his trials, as if they dated only from yesterday ; 
I suffered what he suffered, and I blushed for the men who 
deserted him as I should blush for a national disgrace. 

I was met at the central depot by one of those Americans, 
numerous in the United States but whose existence is not 
even suspected in Europe, whose whole life is devoted 
to the public good. I was immediately taken to one of the 
fine residences that adorn the new part of the city ; but 
before referring to this paradise of hospitality, let me finish 
what I have to say about the old town. 

I requested to be shown it as soon as possible — immedi- 
ately after my first lecture engagement, which had to be 
fulfilled directly on reaching St. Louis — and I went 
straight to the bridge over the Mississippi. T declined to 
visit any of the public buildings, and, in fact, one of my 
weaknesses is a distaste for seeing public buildings. My 
friends may be astonished and pained, but I cannot help 
it; I have seen too many '^ Monuments" in my time. 
I have always said that one cannbt see a country through 
society, and it is the same with public buildings. What 
interests me is the earth, the sky, the men, the problems. 
A description of the capitol of every city I visit need not 
be expected from me. 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 157 

The Mississippi 

The Mississippi, a magnificent and unutilized river, 
flows before me. Like the Missouri, it does nothing but 
flood the surrounding country, which seems to be the prin- 
cipal function of great rivers nowadays. Civilization dis- 
dains them, but no matter; this is but one out of many 
cases in which man has spurned Nature's gifts. None the 
less does the river spread out its broad surface of water 
that springs from so far away; and this is the river that 
once bore our pinoeers. 

Cavalier de la Salle 

I can see Cavalier de la Salle and his thirty- three French- 
men floating down in their Indian canoes. They have 
come from Quebec ; after Cartier and Champlain, they 
have made their way up the St. Lawrence ; they have 
reached Lake Erie and the inland seas formed by the Great 
Lakes ; they have battled with the extremes of climate, so 
cold in winter and hot in summer; they have lived by 
hunting the bison and wild goose, but privations have been 
their ordinary lot ; they have crossed marshes and forests, 
and braved reptiles, wild beasts, mosquitoes, men and 
animals; they have left behind more than one of their 
number, taken in ambush and tortured, or worn out by dys- 
entery, like that fine man Father Marquette, whom the 
Church, in default of France, ought to have glorified and 
beatified ; they have built forts, especially the one named, 
only too well, Creve-coeur (heart-break) ; they have built 
a flotilla, and even a ship, the Griffon, lost through 
treachery on the part of its pilot; they have long sought 
the unknown sources of the rivers that flow into the Atlan- 
tic, and those of the Great Lakes ; nothing has shaken 
their courage ; they have inspired confidence in the Indians, 



158 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

living Chateaubriand's romances before they were written, 
and inculcating amity rather than the spirit of lucre and 
conquest; they have learned the Indians' tongue, entered 
into alliances with some and fought against the more fero- 
cious ; they have reached the dividing line of the watershed 
and, to cross it, organized — at what risks and at what a 
cost ! — the ^'portages" whose names still appear in French 
on the maps; they have penetrated the mysteries of the 
other side. Here they come, down the Ohio River first 
and then down the Illinois, till they came here — here 
where I stand ! 



Martyrdom of our Pioneers 

One of these journeys lasted two years ! Two years with 
no shelter save the changing sky, no food save what chance 
brought them or the flesh of alligators, and none but Na- 
ture's remedies against unrelenting diseases: two years 
without money, without armed forces, without ammuni- 
tion, without support against persistent attacks on them- 
selves and their reputations ! Their one passion was to go 
forward — to create and conquer a continent. In his 
proclamation on April 9, 1682, La Salle was able to do hom- 
age to Louis XIV by presenting him with New France, or 
Louisiana, to which La Salle gave the king's name. Louisi- 
ana comprised the whole of the immense watershed and 
the rivers that flow through it, some ice-cold and some 
scalding hot, and all the surrounding territory. Colbert 
understood La Salle and supported him against the cabals 
that were formed against him, as well as against his credi- 
tors and the men who were jealous of him, and Governor 
La Barre's foolish treachery. Several times La Salle made 
the journey from America to Versailles — a still more ad- 
venturous undertaking than exploring the Mississippi. 
As every one knows, his life came to a miserable end, as 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 59 

sad as that of Dupleix and even more tragic. Involved 
as he was in debts that were an honor to him, and impov- 
erished through having enriched his country, death was 
all he needed to become a genuine French hero. Captain 
de Beaujeu, who was ordered to convey him to the mouth 
of the Mississippi, either made a mistake or wilfully de- 
ceived him, and abandoned him on the desert coast of Texas. 
Even this blow could not subdue his unconquerable energy. 
He made up his mind to reach the Mississippi once more 
and make his way upstream to Canada, so as to be able 
to provide access to his beloved Louisiana by two entirely 
different routes, from the south as well as the north. It 
was on this ground that La Barre denounced him as a 
madman and a national danger. He started off on foot, 
through forests and across deserts, and he had proceeded 
a considerable distance inland when his companions mur- 
dered him and left his body to the wild beasts. He was 
forty-four years old. 

Martyrdom is a most powerful incentive. Those who 
came after Champlain, Marquette and La Salle were 
legion ; and business men began to see that profit was to 
be had by following in their footsteps and reaping the fruit 
of their heroic efforts. Colbert gave the movement a 
start by organizing colonization officially and sending out 
four thousand farmers from Brittany, Normandy and Anjou 
to Canada, where they spread out in all directions. They 
had established various centers which had grown into 
towns (still bearing French names) when France met with 
a series of disasters, such as the treaty of Utrecht whereby 
Newfoundland was given up, the bitter rivalry between 
the Capuchins and the Jesuits, and finally, at the end of 
Louis the Fifteenth's reign, the desertion and profaning of 
everything that had been conceived and accomplished by 
French genius. 



l6o AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Creation of St. Louis 

St. Louis was originally nothing more than a refuge from 
the invading English. The French were outnumbered 
along the whole length of the Atlantic seaboard, and, except 
Sainte Genevieve, they had merely a few outposts on the 
left bank of the Mississippi. They crossed the river. Two 
out of this band of hardy pioneers, the sons of La Verendrye, 
even made their way, unaided, as far as the Rocky Moun- 
tains, which they discovered as long ago as 1742, more 
than sixty years before the existence of these mountains 
was ofhcially recognized. When we lost the fine valley of 
the Ohio, and, with it, the most direct route between the 
two capitals of Louisiana, from New Orleans to Montreal, 
the French fell back upon tlie right bank of the Mississippi, 
where, near its junction with the Missouri, they decided 
to look for the most suitable position for a center of com- 
munication between the north and the south, which would 
also serve as a base for exploring and hunting expeditions 
in the untrodden west. The Louisiana Fur Company 
intrusted Pierre Laclede, who was then thirty-nine years 
of age, with the command of the expedition. He left 
New Orleans in 1763 and established himself first of all at 
Sainte Genevieve and then at Fort Chartres, but finally 
selected the unknown site that is now the metropolis of 
this great valley and is before my eyes. 

From all the centers occupied by the French there went 
out, with Pierre Laclede and after him, a succession of 
travelers, trappers, hunters and woodmen whose poetic 
existence in these virgin territories has given rise to many a 
legend. The exploits of Mme Chouteau, who accompanied 
Laclede, and those of her two sons, Pierre and Auguste 
Chouteau — especially those of the younger, Auguste, who, 
at the age of thirteen, was given the command of a party 
of thirty men — were romances in real life. They inspired 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA l6l 

literature that gave food to our imaginations for nearly a 
century and still had its influence long afterwards. 

The Treaties of Utrecht and of Paris 

All these achievements of the French in Louisiana, like 
those of Montcalm and La Bourdonnaye, counted for 
nothing at Versailles. They were treated as so much rub- 
bish by the treaty of Paris; and New France, like the 
French Indies, ceased to exist. The saddest part of the 
affair is that Louis XV is not alone responsible for this 
abandonment. He was encouraged by the state of feeling 
that prevailed in his court and even among great French 
thinkers, who made it a point of honor to treat the New 
World as of no consequence. Their amusing but silly 
utterances on the question are too well known to need 
repeating here. It must also be recognized that only by 
means of peace, and in peace, can any power flatter itself 
on being able to keep its sway over distant colonies. Eng- 
land herself has experienced this. She took advantage of 
our difficulties at home and abroad to appropriate our 
colonies, but she had to give them up again a few years 
later to the United States, under pressure of the clever 
poHcy of Vergennes and a European copJition. Louisiana 
has changed hands six times in the course of a century, 
passing from France to Spain and England and finally to 
the United States, with its immense territory now divided 
into fourteen states. This last transition was inevitable. 
It might and ought to have been an additional Hnk between 
France and the New World, instead of being, as it was, a 
humiliation of the worst kind. This humihation was 
especially painful to me at St. Louis as a diplomatist, a 
Frenchman and a man ; and it is as painful for the Ameri- 
cans as ourselves. No one need feel at all proud of such a 
transaction. 



M 



1 62 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The Selling of Louisiana 

Louis XV betrayed New France ; Napoleon I sold it. I 
know of no other piece of barter so sordid and repulsive as 
this. History has shown us only one side of the picture : 
Talleyrand's diplomacy unscrupulously parceling out what 
he had to offer, sealing the fate of nations and executing 
them at a distance with a stroke of the pen, just as Na- 
poleon gave orders to execute the Duke of Enghien and 
put Toussaint TOuverture out of the way. But we must 
see the other side of the picture and know what followed 
these executions. In this respect the Americans are im- 
partial historians, and we owe a debt of gratitude to some 
of them, such as Parkman, who have done justice to our 
work and to our countrymen — a justice that we ourselves 
refused to grant them. Even the English have adopted 
Dupleix, whom we condemned. I have heard Cecil Rhodes 
speak of Dupleix almost as if he were a god, and ask me 
indignantly how France could have been so ungrateful 
towards one of her greatest sons. 

The Funeral of the Flag 

The Americans have given us a moving account of the 
manner in which the sale of Louisiana was carried out. 
The French in Louisiana were amazed enough to find 
themselves handed over to Spain in 1768, but they can 
hardly have believed the evidence of their senses when they 
discovered that their cherished land had been sold to the 
United States for sixteen million dollars as the outcome of 
secret treaties or, rather, underhand maneuvers that no 
one cared to admit. They were quite ready to agree that 
France, in danger as she was of a renewal of age-long con- 
flicts with her neighbors, could not keep Louisiana ; but 
sell it, when a free gift of the country would have been 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 63 

both noble and politic ! Louisiana should have been 
treated as a daughter to be given in marriage and not as a 
slave to be bartered. It was worse still to sell Louisiana 
to the United States after the war of independence and 
its noble alHance of two nations in the struggle for Uberty. 
Revolutionary France selling Louisiana to the country that 
issued the Declaration of Independence: the France of 
Lafayette, Grasse and Rochambeau ! It was like diplo- 
macy throwing down a challenge to human dignity. The 
price itself showed ignorance and disdain. Sixteen million 
dollars for a continent that produces thousands of millions 
every year! At New Orleans, on Dec. 20, 1803, after 
the Spanish authorities had lowered their standard to make 
way for the French flag, the latter's turn came to be hauled 
down. The ceremony was carried out with great pomp, in 
obedience to strict orders from Napoleon and the govern- 
ment of the United States. For the last time the people 
cheered the tricolor as it fluttered down. They saw the 
banner, spangled with America's stars of youth, rise to the 
masthead. Then they formed in procession and silently 
wended their way, as if to a funeral, following their dead 
flag to the governor's house. It was the burial of New 
France. France's pioneers were mocked and hindered in 
their lifetime, and now that they were dead the government 
of the day was making money out of what they had ac- 
complished. 

" Sic vos non vobis " (^'Thus you labor but not for your- 
selves"), say the skeptics, sneeringly ; but the actions of a 
government cannot affect men's fame. The reward is in 
doing the work to which a man has set his hand, and not 
in success. The world to-day does our pioneers the justice 
they could not obtain in their lifetime, and France gains 
by it. So much for the past, and now for the St. Louis of 
to-day. 



1 64 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

2. The Population. The Climate of the United States 

What would Laclede and the young Chouteaus — who 
built the first streets in St. Louis in 1764, beginning with 
Market Street — say if they could see the city now, with 
nearly twenty miles of river frontage and not far from a 
million inhabitants : the fourth city in the United States 
and the capital of one of the richest states in North 
America ? What would Mme. Chouteau say ? She would 
have her villa, which would no doubt be a very handsome 
one, overlooking the park, in the residential quarter ; for 
American cities are almost invariably laid out in accord- 
ance with the accepted Roman, EngHsh and colonial idea 
of not living where one works, of attending to one's af- 
fairs during the day in the business district, in contact with 
workmen and natives, and spending the rest of one's time 
in as attractive and airy a residence as possible. The whole 
population of St. Louis, including the working class, emi- 
grates in this way toward the setting sun. St. Louis has 
its West End, like London and Paris. 

What I am never tired of admiring, though I see it every- 
where amid the prodigious expansion of American cities, 
is the contempt for obstacles. Every one looks on the 
bright side of the country and its future. Very little heed 
is paid to criticisms, and everything gets straightened out 
in the long run. The essential point is that, as a geographi- 
cal fact, nothing can prevent St. Louis from being a great 
center for all agricultural and other produce of the north, 
south, east and west, and one of the great markets for to- 
bacco, cotton, wool, cattle, hides, canned provisions, wood, 
cereals and barley. The early French settlers have died 
out, and German brewers and manufacturers, in much 
greater numbers, have taken their place. These, in turn, 
will become Americans, inasmuch as St. Louis is also a 
center of population in which all the varying elements 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 65 

that go to make up the American nationality are fused 
together. 

More than one of my readers will no doubt take excep- 
tion to such optimism, and exclaim: ''The Americans are 
not perfect; they have their faults." I know they have, 
seeing that they have inherited ours and those of all the 
other emigrants from whom they are descended. I realize 
for one thing, Kke every one else, all that the Americans 
have to learn in the sphere of international relations, in 
which they are newcomers. There are detestable Ameri- 
cans, just as there are detestable Frenchmen, EngHshmen, 
Germans, Italians and Russians. I will even go so far 
as to admit that any new country necessarily must contain 
more adventurers than are to be found in old countries ; 
but there is also less egoism and less routine, and there is 
an average inteUigence born of the experience and initiative 
which are constantly in use and tend to make every one 
realize what is meant by the pubHc interest. I will also 
admit that the Americans I met nearly all belonged to the 
very best class ; but this is the class to study, because it 
does not confine itself to accepting things as they are, but 
is a live, active force in guiding and educating the people 
and forming the rest of the country after its own image. 
Nothing is more futile than to confine one's investigations to 
the inferior and unassimilated types in a community while 
the higher types are trying to make the others follow in their 
wake. If we want to understand not only what the United 
States have been, and are, but what they will be, we must 
make ourselves acquainted with the ehte of the nation. 

Much might also be said on the question of climate. 
Just as the Americans put up with a continual influx of 
all sorts of people so long as the latter fall into line with the 
national education, so they are deUghted with their clim.ate, 
which strikes me as open to question ; but then I am a 
Frenchman and, consequently, spoiled in this respect. 



1 66 AAIERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

All Kinds of Climate 

All kinds of climate, as well as all kinds of agriculture, 
are to be found at St. Louis — heat and cold, not forgetting 
the national draught, my personal enemy. The Americans 
live in a perpetual draught. The country is always more 
or less windy, and I am incUned to think that the outcome of 
this passion for draught is to be found in the multitude of 
strange diseases on which the surgeons have fastened. An 
incalculable number of my American friends have had 
their forehead or ears or nose cut open, so as to be relieved 
of what I take to be the results of draught. On the other 
hand, I sympathize with the Americans in their war against 
mosquitoes and flies, which they regard as propagators of 
epidemics. In this semi-tropical country, there are quan- 
tities of insects, unknown to us, that make Hfe a burden. 
Bites from certain kinds of mosquitoes are positively ven- 
omous. In spite of this danger, the Americans sleep out- 
doors, while we, though lucky enough to know nothing about 
it, save in very exceptional cases, shut our windows tightly. 
In self-defense, however, they have to put wire netting over 
their window frames, Hke so many larders. These veils 
between them and the sky considerably darken the rooms, 
but the reply to remarks on this point is : "It is simply a 
brief period in the national history. Americans will destroy 
flies and mosquitoes just as they have stamped out yellow 
fever." 

Floods and Earthquakes 

It will not be so easy, however, to deal with the floods, 
and especially the earthquakes. I had no time to discuss 
this question at San Francisco. I did not want to hurt 
my friends' feelings. Inhabitants of San Francisco do not 
care to be reminded that their city was destroyed by an 
earthquake, or to be asked why there are still some vacant 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 67 

lots in the best parts of the city. If the question comes up, 
they tell you that the fire did a great deal more damage 
than the earthquake ; that is to say, the fire combined with 
lack of water and defective organization, which will not 
happen again. The real truth is that terrible natural 
catastrophes, such as earthquakes, floods, cyclones, tor- 
nadoes and tidal waves, happen in the United States, but 
the inhabitants make Hght of them. Instead of putting 
up with being ruined, like the people of Messina, for in- 
stance, at first, and resigning themselves to living next 
door to the cemetery in which their former homes are 
buried, they immediately set to work again, and take ad- 
vantage of the accident to build better than before. Great 
progress resulted from the tidal wave that submerged 
Galveston. Chicago did the same kind of thing a long 
time ago, in 1855, which did not prevent a general recon- 
struction of the city after the great fire in 187 1. I am 
almost led to ask whether we have our proper share of 
catastrophes in France ! Two hours after the earthquake 
at San Francisco, the business men and leading citizens 
were meeting to improvise temporary markets and 
shelters, distribute clothing and provisions, and take up 
the thread of life where it had been dropped. Auto- 
mobiles, then in their infancy, were used with wonder- 
ful effect in saving the sick and wounded and taking 
away business papers and valuable articles which would 
otherwise have been burned. The services of the auto- 
mobile must be given credit. The San Francisco 
earthquake was described to me, with other witnesses 
to back him up, by a savant well known in the United 
States, Dr. David Starr Jordan, now chancellor of Leland 
Stanford University. In the face of the recent ruin of 
many buildings of his own university, which spoke for them- 
selves, he told me that earthquakes in California occur at 
least once every fifty years. The earth undulates like the 



1 68 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

ocean. ''They were real waves on which we suddenly 
found ourselves," he said. "The stairs danced, the doors 
were furiously shaken like a rat by a bull dog." 

Peace Necessary 

The inhabitants of St. Louis have had their share of 
natural disasters, and for this reason, with many others, they 
do not care to have voluntary catastrophes as well. Both 
in the city and the West End I was met with unmistakable 
proofs of regard for my country and my cause. One 
Saturday I was invited to luncheon at the City Club, where 
business men, bankers, manufacturers, engineers, archi- 
tects and many others meet for the hasty dispatch of a 
few simple dishes before leaving the city, where work always 
stops on Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. 
Several spoke feelingly to me of their French origin. One 
of them was a grandson of the first doctor who ever settled 
in the valley, Antoine Sangrain, a friend of Franklin and 
relative of Guillotin, the celebrated member of the Con- 
stituent Assembly. The first doctor in the valley ! This 
is a title that conveys a great deal about the old city of 
St. Louis. 

Another explains to me that all this valley, this continent, 
has been metamorphosed in the twinkling of an eye, inde- 
pendently of the energy of our pioneers. He brings me into 
touch with the miraculous consequences of the application 
of steam and then electricity in a new country where not 
a single enterprise of the past circumscribes the establish- 
ments to be created ; the freedom of conceiving everything 
with the material possibility of realizing everything ; the 
most perfected methods, the latest model of all the manu- 
factures of the world as a point of departure, and all this 
at the service of the experience and boldness of a population 
picked from the most adventurous people of Europe. All 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 169 

the speeches I heard from business men at the City Club 
were so many denunciations of routine and of risky poli- 
cies that would endanger the results attained. President 
Robert Brookings, whose guest I was, expressed himself 
very clearly to the effect that the material and financial 
interests of all the Powers are now inextricably inter- 
mingled ; that, when one is threatened, some other is nec- 
essarily affected; that what was once separated is now 
united ; that these conditions prevail in the world of labor 
as well as in the financial and scientific worlds ; that the 
political world will have to look out for trouble if it ig- 
nores this truth ; and that this is a new factor which every 
government must take into account. 

These sentiments were echoed by the St. Louis news- 
papers. I was impressed by the Saturday special num- 
bers, which contain volumes of reading matter and an 
extraordinary profusion of really fine illustrations. The 
Americans read, or skim through, a great many news- 
papers, magazines and reviews. They even read books. 
I envy them. A book may have great influence on Ameri- 
cans, especially if it concerns the building up of their 
country and may consequently affect their future. 

Souvenirs of France 

I often hear Tocqueville, Turgot and Rousseau men- 
tioned in the universities, as well as modern writers 
and present-day Sorbonne professors who are personally 
known and appreciated. We have seen American writers, 
beginning with Barrett Wendell, George Grafton Wilson 
and Henry van Dyke, come to Paris to give the public the 
benefit of their profound knowledge of Franco-American 
relations in the past, and propagate their generous enthusi- 
asm, like apostles, on their return home. I may mention 
another eloquent lecturer, Dr. John H. Finley, president 



lyo AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

of New York City College, who came to Brouage, in France, 
to buy a few stones from Champlain's house so that they 
could be framed into the wall of his own, like relics; and 
I was much touched to see him preparing for an expedition 
to Canada, whence he was to go down the Mississippi in a 
canoe, following the same route as La Salle. In France 
I have seen an American, Mr. Ledoux, a New York mining 
engineer. One of his ancestors was among the Frenchmen 
who left Maine in the seventeenth century to colonize 
Canada and that other Maine, in America, which the 
English made into ''Main-land," and who, perhaps, also 
helped to found that wonderful town Du Lude (Anglicized 
as Duluth on Lake Superior). Mr. Ledoux was on a 
regular pilgrimage to the land of his ancestors, and he 
found himself very much at home there. I need not 
add that St. Louis possesses a Lafayette Park, a Laclede 
Avenue, a Giverville Avenue, a Gratiot Street, a La Salle 
Street, a Papin Street and a Chouteau Avenue. 

St. Louis Exhibition. French and American Idealism 

All these souvenirs might have been made the occa- 
sion for some really impressive ceremony at the St. 
Louis Exhibition, when the Americans celebrated the 
centenary of the sale of Louisiana to the United 
States. It was a great chance for a frank and free 
exchange of sentiments; but we are so worried and ab- 
sorbed by our anxieties in Europe that the opportunity 
was missed. We did not manage to discover, or the Amer- 
icans to show, what remained of the past in their country. 
We saw nothing but outside appearances. Good French- 
men who could not speak a word of English lost all ex- 
pansiveness when they met good Americans who could 
not speak a word of French ; and when these same French- 
men returned home, I heard them complain, and talk about 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 171 

nothing except what they had neither seen nor heard. 
There are sentiments which must be shared if they are to 
be understood, and must be encouraged if they are to ex- 
pand. I recognize that we are easily deceived by appear- 
ances, and that our mutual ignorance has no difficulty in 
getting the better of us. French idealism meets American 
idealism and passes by without seeing it or recognizing its 
own child ; and the Americans, in turn, cannot readily 
recognize the connection of the present with the ancestors 
from whom they claim descent. This is the explanation 
of many misunderstandings between two nations, whose 
future cannot be realized, and may even be affected, if 
their past be ignored. 

3. The French Spirit. The French Language. 
The Country as it is 

Notwithstanding the succession of mistakes and weak- 
nesses that seems to have extinguished even the remem- 
brance of France for centuries, something is left of her 
throughout the valley of the Mississippi — something of 
the French spirit. This something, no doubt, is not ap- 
parent to the traveler who has good reasons for not believ- 
ing in the existence, and still less the survival, of the spirit. 
This is the traveler who is not to be taken in, who does not 
mean to regard the United States as anything but a country 
of dollars and hog merchants, who generally encounters 
only people of his own kind and judges all others by them. 
It is nevertheless easy to understand that there are two 
screens between the unenlightened foreign visitor and the 
real conditions of the country through which he passes. 
He cannot look inside the houses, which are usually closed 
to him, and he encounters reserve on the part of the occu- 
pants of those houses when he happens to enter them. How 
many travelers there are whose knowledge of the country 



172 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

they visit is confined to misanthropic museum attendants 
and the interested poHteness of hotel waiters, or the rough 
manners of railway servants or, in the case of a business 
man, the bad turns done him by a bad customer ! How 
many travelers, too, take advantage of being unknown to 
behave just as they please, as if no one were looking at 
them, on the ground that they know nothing about their 
surroundings ; and how many excite ridicule or enmity 
and leave behind them a revengeful feeling, for which those 
who come after them are at a loss to account ! I remember 
the mortification expressed by an English statesman, a 
friend of France, when he encountered his compatriots in 
Paris, calmly showing themselves in the streets and theaters 
in clothes that would do very well for mountain climbing, 
and wearing caps that would suit either sex. When 
they saw these caravans, the Parisians exclaimed: "Look 
at those English!" and not one of them noticed Lord 
SaHsbury or Lord Granville or John Burns, who were 
dressed like ordinary people. 

The President Mr. Brookings 

I might have passed by President Brookings quite often 
without discovering that he was one of the numerous rep- 
resentatives of American idealism, but I was fortunate 
enough to be his guest. He is a bachelor, and I can refer to 
his home without bringing his family into the case and 
making things awkward for him. He will excuse me if I 
take advantage of these exceptional circumstances to use 
him as an argument. I should provide a very poor return 
for the kindness he lavished on me if I did not try to make 
my gratitude extend beyond him — to his country. 

Mr. Brookings is a young man of sixty. Tall, slender, 
erect, aristocratic, healthy and rich, he has everything that 
can ruin a man — charm and wealth ; but he has also a 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 73 

redeeming quality — a heart in the right place. Not know- 
ing him personally, I had planned to spend only one day 
with him and then go on to Winnipeg ; but as the Canadian 
elections were at hand, and the prime minister, Sir Wilfrid 
Laurier, was already being violently attacked, I was afraid 
that my addresses, as they bore on questions of the hour, 
and especially on naval expenses, might involve me in- 
voluntarily in the campaign against him, and I decided 
to change my plans. I accordingly gave up Winnipeg 
and lingered in St. Louis, the paradise of American hos- 
pitality. 

Mr. Brookings, who is honorary president of Washington 
University, is a retired merchant, or what we in France 
would call a '^ render,'^ a word untranslatable in Enghsh 
and especially in American. He is one of those prac- 
tical idealists, good shepherds and superior guides of 
whom I have found numerous examples in every American 
city, so that he is not to be looked upon as an exception. 
His form of effort, a very fine one, consists wholly of serving 
his country the United States, his city and his university 
in St. Louis. He is before everything a good citizen, and 
several races are blended in him. He is English in virtue 
of his name and his experience of important business affairs, 
but he has Spanish or Southern blood in his veins, the pro- 
file of a great Arab chieftain, and the keenness of a French 
pioneer. Just think of the screen that would have hidden 
this American from us if we had not made our way into his 
home ! Like many of his countrymen. President Brookings 
knows and likes France, reads French and knows our best 
authors by heart, and yet he will not speak French, through 
a timidity and mistaken diffidence that is very common in 
Anglo-Saxon countries, especially among the men ; the 
women are less timid. It is an insular and childish defect, 
which is still more noticeable in England, where there is no 
excuse for it, than in America. I will dwell for a moment 



174 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

on this question, which is of considerable importance to 
the progress of international relations. 

With a few fortunate exceptions, the EngHsh have made 
it a point of honor to speak no language but their own. 
They cultivate this inferiority as if it were a proof of the 
highest social refinement and patriotic superiority. Let 
foreigners speak English if they need to do so ! We have 
come across affectations of aristocratic ignorance in France, 
but in our country they smack of the upstart. What 
makes it still worse for the English is that they are natu- 
rally silent and reserved. When they have something to 
say, they do not venture to say it even in English, and still 
less in French. They never ask their way, especially in 
their own country. When I was a diplomatist in England, 
one of my friends came to dine with us in the country one 
summer evening and stayed rather late. I walked part of 
the way to the railway station with him, and did not say 
good night until I had fully explained which way he was 
to go. As the night was dark and the hour for the last 
train to London near, I added that at the first turn of the 
road he would find a policeman who would direct him. 

"No, I know well enough,' ' said my friend. "I will 
have no need to ask." 

And as I expressed a doubt he added : 

"I never ask my way." 

**You would rather get lost?" I asked, smiling. 

"Yes," he said. 

Thousands of Englishmen are thus. It is bad form to 
learn foreign languages abroad. They have established 
this principle in traveling, more than any other people, of 
never changing their customs. They travel for amuse- 
ment, for rest rather than instruction. They always sur- 
round themselves with their own insularity, and this is 
true even in their own colonies where they do not take the 
trouble to know the population whose affairs they are 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 75 

attempting to administer. Their colonial home remains 
English like their language. Distance, climate, nothing 
changes it. Just as other European peoples, Slavs, Scan- 
dinavians and Germans, gratify themselves by speaking 
foreign languages, so the English take their gratification 
by remaining ignorant of them. They do not know all 
that they lose, for instance, in the struggles of international 
competition ; and that they lay themselves open to disap- 
pointments in economic and intellectual affairs and poHtics. 
But so it is. I insist upon the point here because the ig- 
norance of one is a danger for all others, and because the 
English need friends to tell them the truth, especially when 
their error is contagious. I will cite one more striking 
example from a thousand others. 

When I was a young diplomatist, one of my colleagues 
on the Montenegrin delimitation commission was a clever 
English officer of the Royal Engineers. He was an ex- 
ceptionally gifted linguist and had a young son, whom he 
brought up at Constantinople, and who spoke French as 
perfectly as his father. In due course the boy was sent to 
school in England, where he had a very bad time indeed, 
his schoolmates having discovered that he not only spoke 
French well, but spoke it with a French accent ! This was 
voted ridiculous, and there was nothing for it but for him 
to make himself like the rest and unlearn French, or, at 
any rate, speak it like a good Englishman. This "back- 
ward progress" took him two years. 

Many Americans have inherited this voluntary inferi- 
ority from the English. Most of those I see — not in Paris, 
where, as every one knows, there is a colony of ultra-refined 
American men and women, but in the country, at my home, 
where they make a halt in the course of their rapid expedi- 
tions — carry America with them wherever they go. They 
travel with other Americans, talk to them only and know 
no others. They rush through the country in their auto- 



176 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

mobiles, very much as they might in a boat or a balloon, 
without receiving any but the vaguest impressions or 
seeing anything but catalogued curiosities and fleeting 
visions like those of a picture theater run at full speed. 
This is a great pity, especially in France. To go through a 
country so full of native intelligence and experience as ours, 
without talking to its inhabitants, is about as enlightening 
as it would be for a deaf and dumb man, and even a blind 
man, to travel. Keen as they are to pick up new ideas and 
education, Americans do not know how much they miss 
by these mute expeditions of theirs. They only see what 
is obvious. When they go through a forest, they know how 
many acres it covers, but their eyes are closed to its mys- 
teries. They fail to perceive the violets and the lilies of 
the valley at the foot of the oak tree. They know not the 
inner charm of things, and pass by the sources of art and 
thought; and they return home in the belief that they 
have traveled. All they have done is to go from place to 
place and see ruins, museums and scenes, but not countries. 

Happy Change. A French Lesson 

This state of things is luckily changing very rapidly. A 
great many young Americans, artists and students, now 
live in Paris, and elsewhere in France, and in Germany and 
Italy. Nevertheless I have persistently striven, especially 
at the universities, against what is still left of the tendency 
to adhere to English habits and ideas all over the world. 
I resorted to all sorts of devices to make my meaning clear, 
because a lecturer is like an actor who must hold his au- 
dience at any cost. I have even had to act my lectures, so 
as to compel attention. I generally spoke before an au- 
dience of intelHgent and wide-awake young men and girls, 
who were nevertheless artlessly convinced that English was 
sufficient for all purposes in America. Sometimes, indeed. 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 77 

I was conscious that there was a feeling of skeptical indif- 
ference towards me as a foreigner; and the long rows of 
hundreds and thousands of listeners became, to my mind, 
so many spectators, forming a wall in which I had to make 
a breach. I then made a deliberate attack. I began with 
a coup de theatre, by speaking in French ! I merely made 
a few commonplace remarks, but kept on for some seconds. 
Amused surprise, uneasiness and finally dismay showed 
themselves in turn on every face. There was a general 
stir, and all my hearers were asking one another : '' Can you 
understand him? What is he talking about?" 

Having produced the desired effect, I stopped short, 
appeared very much surprised, and inquired in English : 

''Don't you understand French?" 

A few very timid repHes of ''yes" were drowned in an 
outburst of laughter and "noes." Thereupon I pretended 
to be in great perplexity, walked up and down the plat- 
form, declared that I had prepared my address in French, 
and asked whether they really expected me to cross the 
ocean and the American continent to come and struggle 
with a foreign language while such clever young people as 
they might just as well have learned French ? 

This exordium, or rather this comedy prologue, accom- 
panied by gestures and attitudes that can readily be im- 
agined, was invariably successful. Faced by a well-defined 
and unexpected situation, every one settled down, all ears 
and eyes, to look and Hsten. My audience and I had 
become friends. I took advantage of this to point out 
that, if I had been as they were, we should have known 
nothing of each other's thoughts and desires or what we were 
worth. Moreover, our best sentiments, if wrongly inter- 
preted and taken in bad part, might create misunderstand- 
ing and trouble instead of friendship between us and our 
countries. My remarks were addressed to young people 
nearly all of whom were on the point of choosing a career 



178 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and deciding upon their future. I accompanied them, meta- 
phorically, at the outset of their journey and pointed out 
their inferiority to the young Germans and Frenchmen, who, 
in this age of manifold means of communication, would 
reap the benefit of being able to act as intermediaries in a 
new form of civilization. How can you be diplomatists, 
for instance, I asked, or consuls, or simply business agents, 
or artists, or lawyers, or politicians or writers if you know 
nothing of foreign nations, especially when they are all 
more or less joining hands and combining forces with a 
view to future cooperation? 

The Hague Conferences 

I then gave my audience some of my personal experiences 
at the two Hague congresses, taking care, of course, not to 
omit the most amusing ones. I remarked, in substance, 
that in 1899 ^^^Y twenty-six powers were represented, 
among them being Americans, French, Germans, Russians, 
Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Siamese, Greeks, etc. It might 
have been supposed that this first meeting would simply 
be a second edition of the Tower of Babel. It was 
nothing of the kind, because all the representatives of 
these various nations were able to exchange ideas and work 
together, thanks to their knowledge of at least one foreign 
language, French. Mr. Seth Low spoke French, so did 
Mr. Frederick W. Holls, and Mr. Andrew D. White knew 
it very well. What, I asked my hearers, would you have 
done in such an assembly? Do you want to shut your- 
selves out from the world by not knowing what your com- 
petitors know? At the second congress, in 1907, which 
lasted twice as long as the first, the demonstration was 
even more striking. Twice the number of powers were 
represented, but out of about three hundred delegates there 
was practically not a single one who did not understand 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 79 

French. The American delegates, General Porter, David 
Jayne Hill and James Brown Scott, spoke French; and 
several of them, after a few days' preliminary modesty, 
made excellent, and sometimes very fine, speeches in 
French — speeches that enabled them to win splendid 
victories for their country and for international justice. 
Most of the principal foreign delegates spoke French like 
Frenchmen — Baron -Marschall the first German delegate, 
the first and all the Russian delegates, the first and all the 
Italian delegates, the Dutch, Spaniards, Portuguese, Scan- 
dinavians, South Americans, and the first Chinese, Japanese 
and Siamese representatives. I shall never forget how sur- 
prised I was when one of my Turkish colleagues at the 
Hague casually remarked: "The only books I read are 
French.'' 

The first American delegate, my friend Joseph H. Choate, 
took refuge behind his eighty years of success and was the 
only representative who decfined to change his style. He 
persisted in delivering his most eloquent addresses in 
English, but one reason, among others, was that I did him 
the bad turn of translating as he went along, and as we were 
always of the same way of thinking, my translation was 
most enthusiastic! Allowing for such exceptional cases, 
all Americans who want to serve their country and to rank 
as men whose names will be remembered should make 
themselves understood, and not confine themselves to 
speaking, or holding their tongues, in English. 

I wound up by saying : ''Next time I shall address you 
in French, and I hope you will all promise to be able to 
understand me." Every one was delighted at the prospect 
and vowed that it should become a reaUty. I hope that, 
if this meets the eyes of any of my hearers, it will remind 
them of their pledge. What I said was most certainly 
in their own interest, as well as in the interests of 
peace. 



l80 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

4. American Dewtedness. The Paradise of American 

Hospitality 

Let me now close this long but necessary parenthesis. I 
have said that at St. Louis I found the paradise of hos- 
pitality, and the word fully expresses my meaning. Presi- 
dent Brookings's house is both a home and a museum, and 
one might almost call it a nest. A splendid portrait by Lar- 
gilliere welcomes the visitor on entering. Inside is an 
abode of silence, calm and soHtude, opposite the great 
Park (Forest Park) and in the midst of flower gardens 
and green lawns. As I write, all is peaceful. The room 
is flooded with April sunshine. Outside I see shrubs 
in their pretty spring dress, and I watch the blackbirds 
walking elegantly over the turf, and the redbreasts and the 
blue jays. The blackbirds in the United States are an 
especial delight to me. They look as if they were varnished, 
lacquered or coated with jet. No harm is done to them, 
and they are liked. The consequence is that they are 
tame, like the squirrels that jump down from the trees 
upon the lawns and beg almonds from the children. 

We took an automobile trip over the asphalt roads and 
went on and on, visiting other hospitable homes in the coun- 
try, and seeing more and more families, children, flowers and 
birds. Outside the busy ant hill known as the City, St. 
Louis is nothing but a long series of parks extending far 
beyond the range of vision. In one of these parks I saw 
young men playing polo, and elsewhere there was tennis. 
At St. Louis I made my first acquaintance with the na- 
tional game of baseball. I dined with some Americans, 
Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who do not speak French, but who 
nevertheless went not only to France but to my little home, 
simply for the pleasure of gathering lilac there in my ab- 
sence. I dined at the Round Table Club, where the best 
of St. Louis society met in honor of France. 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA l8l 

Human Good Will 

I have said that Americans love France for herself, but 
this does not express the feehng adequately. What they 
like in her is her humanity or human sentiment, whichever 
we may choose to call it. This is something that never 
changes, and has to be known or guessed. Personally, I 
cannot but bear witness to the immense amount of good will 
towards humanity, fermenting in the American mind. I 
say this in spite of all vague assertions to the contrary. 
The feeling is proportionate to the amount of material 
and practical energy developed by all Americans. They 
are a maligned race. They work to make money for them- 
selves, but they also unite, first of all, to render service to 
the community. I am surprised that their attachment to 
the past has not led them to revive the beaver communities 
(destroyed by commercial greed) and adopt them as an 
emblem. Like the beaver, the ant and the bee, they give 
one another mutual support in obedience to the instinct of 
self-preservation. But this is not all. They soon found 
out that it was not sufficient to help one another, and that 
they must also help their city, their country and humanity, 
from which their country is inseparable. Every one real- 
izes that he is but "an atom in a moment of the world's 
existence," but he also feels, intuitively, that, during this 
moment, each atom is a bond between men and nations, 
between the past, the present and the future, a connecting 
link in space and time. Life is really, to the Americans, 
one continuous flow, as Bergson said, just as the Mississippi 
is the same river without ever being the same water. 

Against Skepticism 

While fully realizing the insignificant but definite part 
they have to play in the work of the universe, they are also 



1 82 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

conscious of their duty, and their tendency as a whole is 
to fulfill it. They do not want to remain mere spectators 
of a general effort, but to share in it. They do not want to 
dissociate themselves from the salvation of their country 
any more than from the world's progress. They have no 
use for skepticism. They all, in fact, want to "reduce the 
insecurity of the universe to its minimum," as William 
James finely and luminously expresses it. They are all in 
favor of creating what they call a general demand for se- 
curity and they agree, instinctively, and therefore all the 
more thoroughly, that education is the most practical 
means of realizing this ideal state. 

President Brookings devotes himself, not to mention 
his hospital, partly to his beloved city and partly to his 
beloved university. To him they are inseparable, and 
form one objective and one cult in his heart, business man 
as he is. He is assisted by all his friends in St. Louis, and 
especially by the president of the university. Chancellor 
D. F. Houston,^ a benefactor in the fullest sense of the term. 
Like many others whom I should have liked to mention 
more fully, at New Orleans, in Texas, on the Pacific coast 
and in Colorado, his one object in life is the high one of 
national improvement. 

St. Louis Expansion 

My address at Washington University was delivered in the 
large chapel and was listened to like a service. Civic and 
moral education is the need and the duty that brings all 
the heterogeneous population of the United States together 
into one body. This university is a very fine one. It was 
built in the style of the universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, on a height, away from but as near as possible to 
the city. Its location had to be quiet and in pure air ; at 

.^Now the Secretary of Agriculture at Washington. (March, 1915.) 



THE CAPITAL OF OLD LOUISIANA 1 83 

the same time it had to be easy of access, always a visible 
presence and within reach of the inhabitants. It extends 
westward beyond the new city and beyond Forest Park, a 
few miles from the last houses in what corresponds to the 
Bois de Boulogne. A fine straight avenue, with wide side- 
walks set off by turf and plants, connects it with these 
residences, which will gradually extend nearer to it. This 
is the plan of St. Louis in the future. The university in a 
few years will be its climax, just as it now is the city's crown. 
In order that this future may not be too far distant, Presi- 
dent Brookings plots in all sorts of ways with his accom- 
plice, Dr. Houston. The tramcars, of course, simply fly 
along and supply the necessary means of communication, 
but shortening distance is not enough : it must be aboHshed 
altogether by hastening the extension of St. Louis. If 
need be, the signal for emigration will be given. The mu- 
seum, home and nest created by President Brookings as 
a place to end his days, and around which many other 
modern residences were erected like the outposts of the new 
city, needed to be still further westward so as to act as a 
magnetic pole and draw another ring of houses around it. 
President Brookings has decided to give it up, and will sell 
it. He has already bought another plot much farther out, 
beyond the university. The foundations are dug, the 
walls are going up and my future room will soon be ready. 
And when President Brookings and I are but remem- 
brances to add to the others, his house will have become, 
through his wish, the residence of the future president of 
the university and the starting point for yet another ex- 
tension. Thus is a great country built up by the devotion 
of all to one common purpose. 



CHAPTER X 

THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 

I. St. Paul and Minneapolis. The Seine and the Mississippi. 
American jokes. — 2. The Railroad Crisis. Mr. James J. Hill. 
Outburst of prosperity. No terminal facilities. The panic. The 
water traffic. The ladies of St. Paul and Minneapolis. French 
influence. — 3. Madison. The lakes. The legislature and the 
university of the state of Wisconsin. "Our future is on the 
water." The constitution of the state of Wisconsin. Political 
economy, social science and peace organization. Again the militia. 
— 4. Baseball. The umpire. Early risers. The international 
clubs. The " Marseillaise." Seeds of liberty. 

I. St. Paul and Minneapolis. The River. The Seine. 

The Mississippi 

It is a long way from St. Louis to St. Paul : a day and 
a half by fast train. The railroad follows the Mississippi. 
The sight of a river has always exerted a remarkably seduc- 
tive influence on me. To my way of thinking, two rivers 
are as different from each other and as expressive as two 
faces or the eyes of two people. Each has its own color, 
suggesting that of thought, and, at the same time, reflects 
the constantly changing light of the sky. The river silently 
tells me what it has seen in the course of its long history, 
and speaks to me of the countries through which its course 
has led it. To swim in a deep and limpid river, and dive 
under its surface, temporarily abolishes all idea of resist- 
ance and discord and makes the swimmer at one with the 
irresistible force of the water — a force that nothing can 
tire and whose elusive persistence overcomes all obstacles. 

184 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 185 

I do not propose to compare the Mississippi to any- 
thing or to describe it as finer or less fine. Just below St. 
Louis it is certainly not so picturesque and grand as the 
Columbia River, which I see again as in a dream, or as the 
Hudson. It sometimes reminds me of the Loire when it 
spreads out on the soft soil of its ample bed and carries its 
sandy burden past long, wooded islands. It has no re- 
semblance to the Seine, and it would have made De Maupas- 
sant sad. Foreigners do not realize that the Seine has its 
message for Parisians every day and every moment. It 
gives them its gayety, wit, grace and philosophy ; it acts 
on us without our knowledge, just as a child's frank eyes 
cheer us when we are depressed. 

Many a time I have come out of the heat and turmoil 
of the Chamber of Deputies with a feeling akin to despair 
of human efforts, and have blushed for my weakness when 
I saw the Seine, calm and unconcerned, flowing on, accom- 
phshing its purpose despite all obstacles, as it has done 
from time immemorial, while the Louvre, the Palace of 
Justice and Notre Dame keep solemn watch and ward. 
Many a time have I regained confidence merely through 
seeing the play of the Seine's hurrying wavelets between 
its well-kept banks, bordered with plane trees and poplars 
whose leaves quivered and saluted like so many flags. 

People can abuse France and Paris as much as they 
please ; the Seine is their answer, and it is only doing justice 
to the Seine to say that it has never been prettier than 
during the last few years, though "we are passing through 
such bad times !" as they always say. 

Such were the thoughts and dreams to which I gave 
myself up as I sat alone in the train. 

The Mississippi I saw at St. Louis is not the same as the 
Mississippi I found at St. Paul. It flows between high 
banks and is quite wide, though not far from its source. 
After leaving the well-watered plains, it dashes over falls 



1 86 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

fifty or sixty feet in height and wends its majestic way along 
the bottom of an immense ravine crowned with fine old 
trees. Great bridges, which seen from afar look like mere 
planks, connect its still wooded shores. 

St. Paul is the capital of the state of Minnesota, and it 
is here that the great marble and white granite capitol was 
recently built as a house of parliament and headquarters 
of the three powers that control the state. Here also the 
celebrated Archbishop Ireland built his cathedral and 
seminaries, and established his residence and the center of 
his organization. Under the aegis of St. Paul, the patron 
saint of travelers and apostles, James J. Hill, ''our second 
Franklin, " as the Americans say, also fixed the headquarters 
for his gigantic operations as a builder of railroads in the 
Northwest. At St. Paul also he brought together his col- 
lection of pictures of the French school. St. Paul has 
200,000 inhabitants, but, all the same, its name is never 
used separately but always in conjunction with Minne- 
apoHs. You have to say ''St. Paul and Minneapolis" in 
one breath. The two cities meet without mingling. They 
are not rivals, but twins. The Americans, who are always 
quite ready to make jokes at their own expense, have all 
sorts of funny stories about this. Here is one that shows 
the comical side of their municipal chauvinism. A patriotic 
Minneapolitan is said to have proposed that the New 
Testament should not be read in the city schools because 
there are so many references in it to St. Paul and none to 
Minneapolis ! 

American Jokes 

American jokes spare nobody. Audiences enjoy them 
immensely and receive them with loud and prolonged 
laughter. No speech is a success without a few caustic 
allusions delivered with the utmost seriousness. Here is 
another sample. It was in April, 191 1, at the time when 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 187 

all the newspapers were talking about war with Mexico. 
It was inevitable, they said, though in reality no sensible 
person wanted it. The eminent orator who gave me a 
public welcome had recently returned, like myself, from 
the Texan frontier. He had read, in the newspapers, like 
everybody else, that the two armies facing each other at 
El Paso were on the point of opening fire, and that it was 
only a question of hours. He had decided to wait, he 
said, so as to see the fighting. Nothing happened on the 
first day, or the second or the third ; and on inquiring as to 
the cause of the delay, he found it was because the cine- 
matograph operator had not arrived ! 

Joking apart, there is just as much energy and future 
about MinneapoHs as St. Paul. These two young cities 
have become, like others, the center of one of the most 
active agricultural and manufacturing districts in the 
world — a district which was nothing more than a geo- 
graphical expression fifty years ago. Then there were 
barely half a million inhabitants in the whole of the Ameri- 
can Northwest, and now there are fifteen millions. All 
the history of this country is covered by the short span of 
one life ! 

Minneapolis is the seat of the state university. Its 
population, which is still larger than that of St. Paul, is 
constantly increasing as the result of its business activity 
(the two cities together have nearly 500,000 inhabitants) 
and includes a great many Scandinavians and Germans. 
The point at which the Mississippi becomes the great cen- 
tral artery of the United States is not far above Minne- 
apoHs. This is the commencement of steam navigation, 
or what is left of it, and that portion of the river that is 
turned to account. The St. Antoine Falls, so named by 
Father Hennepin, supplies nearly 100,000 horse power to 
the world-renowned flourmills and sawmills here. Min- 
neapoHs and St. Paul are also the heart of the Great North- 



1 88 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

ern railroad system which extends as far as the Pacific and 
(through other associated roads) to the Gulf of Mexico. 

2. The Railroad Crisis 

My comprehension of the manner in which the American 
railroads have not merely transformed but literally created 
the country came to me at St. Paul and MinneapoKs. As 
Amos Tuck states in his autobiography, throughout the 
first half of the nineteenth century every farm was, more or 
less, and even in the East, like an island cut off from com- 
munication with the cities. There were no roads, and 
vehicles were unknown, except a cumbersome, ramshackle 
coach or two. People went about on foot or horseback, 
and all the spinning, knitting, weaving, washing, dyeing 
and sewing was done at home by the farmer's wife, just 
as in olden times. All this underwent a sudden change, to 
which neither people nor circumstances offered any re- 
sistance. No traditions were affected, no habits had to be 
changed and no privilege was threatened. There was no 
need, as there was in France, for clear-sighted poets to 
champion railroads against skeptical statesmen. If M. 
Thiers had been an American, he would have been on the 
side of the railroads, like Lamartine. No difficulties were 
placed in their way by large towns, whereas in our country 
Tours, Orleans, Alengon and many other towns obliged 
the railroads to depart from what should have been their 
natural course, and professed themselves quite satisfied to 
go on using our fine roads, with their inns and their cele- 
brated diligences. Thus it was that railroads sprang up 
simultaneously all over the United States, and with them 
stations, factories, people and towns, around which crops 
also began to be raised. The crops, however, were brought 
into existence as quickly as everything else and also began 
to move in course of time. They became a medium of 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 1 89 

exchange for the West and South against machinery and 
implements ordered from the East. There was a constant 
stream of passengers and goods in both directions. Towns 
grew up and prospered on the track of this double current, 
which they also helped to strengthen. Every new settle- 
ment extended at an extraordinary rate; and, as there is 
a drawback to everything, such an outburst of prosperity 
itself became an evil, just as a full river swells into a flood. 
It is a natural condition of things, for which sufficient allow- 
ance does not seem to have been made, even in Europe. 
It nevertheless largely accounts for the railroad crisis, or 
rather the scare, experienced six years ago in the United 
States, and whose effects are still felt. The Americans 
allowed themselves to be caught napping just as we were, 
and even more so. They did not in the least realize the 
danger; and this general state of ignorance made the 
trouble much worse. In a more pronounced way, it was 
like our own business crisis, which was also due to an excess 
of prosperity and overproduction and, under the influence 
of panic, was represented as a national disaster. The 
panic was obviously accentuated in America by the illegal 
doings of several companies, the good had to suffer for the 
bad, and those who had been too ready to give credit had 
their confidence terribly shaken ; but it is none the less 
astounding that people should have quarreled so fiercely 
over the question, on both sides of the Atlantic, as to over- 
look the natural cause of the trouble — the force of cir- 
cumstances — and try to fix it on individuals. 

No Terminal Facilities 

It must be generally admitted that the railroads cannot 
exist without what the Americans call "terminal facilities" 
in large towns for handling passenger and goods traffic. 
This implies very large depots, miles of track and sidings. 



I go AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and the necessary rolling stock, coal and staff, independently 
of the extension and proper working of the line. It is 
clear that these terminal facilities ought to increase in 
proportion to the growth of traffic. But not even the 
most extravagantly optimistic engineer, or any one, in fact, 
could have foreseen fifty years ago that the space left for 
the depots would be too small. This is exactly where 
houses have accumulated most. The cities have grown 
up round the depots and appropriated the land now re- 
quired for terminal facihties; but, being built over, it is 
either not for sale at all or is altogether too dear. The 
result is that the railroads found themselves irretrievably 
cramped and confined just as they were entering upon 
the period of growth. The towns stifled them. The new 
Pennsylvania Railroad depot, and especially the Grand 
Central, which has forced its way up in the heart of New 
York, like a tree that splits walls and rocks, are remark- 
able instances of this ; and we are only at the beginning. 

The general activity of the country has been stimulated 
by the unexpected amount of traffic and is steadily in- 
creasing with the population. The tide of commerce is 
rising around every railroad depot. All the commercial, 
agricultural and manufacturing interests are clamoring for 
more rolling stock and engines, which will have to be 
ordered without delay. The result is a state of things that 
is familiar to every one in France. Particularly at Minne- 
apolis, there have been many complaints on this score 
from millers, their grain and flour being among the bulkiest 
goods the railroads have to handle. Consignments that 
ought to have been sent from Chicago to St. Paul in a few 
hours have been known to take twenty-six days. I have 
been told of instances of delay extending to several weeks 
and even to several months. It is a case of plethora, 
aggravated by the impatience of the business interests, that 
have created this state of things and are its first victims. 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL IQI 

Precautions, after all, ought to be taken by these interests, 
especially as they are chiefly concerned ; but they go on 
sending goods by fits and starts, in greater quantities than 
the railroads can carry, and they will not, and sometimes 
cannot, regulate their orders. 

The Panic 

The panic, of course, reacted on the whole world. The 
heavily laden trains in America were followed by thousands 
of empty ones, and thousands and thousands of orders were 
canceled. A still greater number were discontinued. There 
was a general disturbance of credit and a run on the banks. 
Ruin and bankruptcy came thick and fast. And yet, 
strangely enough -— but it is none the less a fact — out of 
ruin came salvation. It was partly owing to the general 
stoppage of business that the railroads were able to clear off 
arrears and resume normal working. Such a remedy, how- 
ever, is worse than the disease. The resumption of traffic 
on a large scale cannot fail to bring a recurrence of the same 
trouble, so long as there is no due proportion between the 
increase in facihties and in the number of travelers and 
quantity of freight conveyed. As matters now stand, the 
railroad haulage has increased during the last few years to 
the extent of only 2 J per cent, while the general output of the 
United States has risen 15 per cent, from which I conclude 
that 12 per cent of the freight is waiting for rolling stock. 

There is still another aspect of the question to be con- 
sidered. As we have seen, the American raihoads connect 
the Atlantic with the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico with 
Canada; but another system of navigation besides that of 
sea and river has grown up on the Great Lakes,^ which 
have attracted the raihoads and provided them with ad- 
ditional traffic feeders. St. Paul and Minneapohs have 
their port, Duluth, which is inseparably identified with 



192 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

their future. Placed at the end of Lake Superior, Duluth 
has become one of the most important ports in the world. 
The total tonnage exceeds that of the port of London. 
To Duluth come those enormous modern cargo boats — to 
which I shall refer later on — to fill up, at the quay side, 
with the ores required for the blast furnaces at Chicago, 
Buffalo, Pittsburgh and many other places. Here are stored 
vast quantities of grain that eventually loads itself into 
specially constructed steamers and then unloads itself into 
mills or immense elevators. People in Europe do not realize 
the tremendous amount of traffic there is on the Great 
Lakes, and still less do they know its mainsprings : on the 
one hand, St. Paul, MinneapoHs and Duluth, and, on the 
other, Fort WilHam (the Canadian rival of Duluth), Sault 
Ste. Marie, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and 
Buffalo ; but nevertheless it will be understood, after what 
I have already said as to the sudden growth of other and 
more distant cities, that the railroads were taken by sur- 
prise, as every one was. It is also clear that here, as else- 
where, this outburst of prosperity has been accompanied 
by serious abuses. Trouble at any part of a system on 
which there is general circulation affects the whole. The 
danger of trusts obtaining a greater supremacy than can 
be endured by the public also has to be borne in mind, 
but all this is no reason for making matters worse by mis- 
leading public opinion and representing the question as 
purely a political one. In tr3dng to straighten out a very 
comphcated situation, poUtics has only made confusion 
worse confounded and has resulted in a repetition of the 
old plan of throwing the blame upon the middleman. 
''No middlemen," as a motto applied to the transport 
business, is a bad joke, especially in a new country that 
owes everything to private initiative, and where, for a very 
long time to come, it will be impossible even to imagine 
direct working (of the railroads) by the state. On the con- 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 1 93 

trary, a new country has to look for middlemen — which 
in this case means the railroad companies and, consequently, 
capital and stockholders ; and, inasmuch as stockholders 
are a necessity, seeing that even cooperative enterprises 
cannot do without them, it is absurd to scare them and try 
to enlist their help at the same time. In the place of 
practical and necessary remedies, politics has fostered an 
accusing spirit and an atmosphere of mistrust which have 
become general through no just cause, instead of the in- 
telligent supervision that everybody wanted. The country 
now has all sorts of petty annoyances and burdens to bear, 
in place of what it ought to have had — confidence restored 
by impartial organization and prompt attention to the 
necessity of supplying new depots, rolling stock, staff and 
improvements, all of which impHes labor and capital — a 
great deal of capital. I have already referred to the fact 
that wages are much higher in America than with us, on 
account of the cost of living and the scarcity of labor. An 
engine driver earns six, seven, eight or as much as ten 
dollars a day, reckoning his bonuses for fuel saving ; and 
he has at least ten days off every month, on full pay. Sup- 
posing that the American railroads decided, and obtained 
permission, to make the extensions necessary in respect of 
terminal facihties, tracks, bridges, level crossings, etc., and 
carry out all the other improvements they now lack, they 
would need 200,000 navvies and an incalculable number of 
track-layers, carpenters and other workmen. Where are 
they to be found, and what would be the cost? Two 
million tons of rails, or two thirds of the total output of 
the American steel works, would have to be ordered every 
year. 

Water Traffic 

While the railroads are overcrowded, water traffic 
promises to develop considerably. The boat is an auxiHary 



194 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

of the railroad freight car. A single modern barge will 
carry as much freight as five or six big trains, and this is the 
only reason why freight is cheaper by water than by rail ; 
but if the barge is not to be stopped halfway, it must have 
a certain depth of water and a properly defined channel, or 
rather a canal. The construction of a canal alongside the 
Mississippi, for instance, is not merely a question of money 
but also of politics, and would imply the adoption, by the 
United States, of quite a Freycinet scheme ; that is to say, 
six thousand miUion dollars. And this scheme has virtually 
failed in France, as regards the canals. 

Where is all this money to be found? Has an ironical 
Fate decreed that French capital is to go comfortably out 
to America in the wake of our heroic pioneers, while foreign 
initiative from all parts of the world rushes in to develop 
the inexhaustible resources of France ? 

In any case, the Americans will not solve their great 
transportation problem unless they grapple resolutely with 
it and avoid half measures. They must make up their 
minds to work on a big scale and adopt big measures. It 
would be neither good policy nor good government, but 
rather incoherence, to try to go on with the present system, 
which consists of clamoring for progress and at the same 
time making it impossible ; of sowing the seeds of discord 
instead of cooperation among those without whose assist- 
ance the joint enterprise cannot be accompHshed ; of setting 
railroads, farmers, business men, railroad hands and the 
pubHc by the ears; and promising the country lower 
tariffs while all the time it is a certainty that these tar- 
iffs will have to be raised in proportion to business 
prosperity. 

I have laid stress on this question of transportation be- 
cause the difficulties the New World is encountering show 
how a good circulation is as necessary to a country as to a 
man in good health. 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 195 

The Ladies of St. Paul and Minneapolis 

My lectures have consisted simply of facts and argu- 
ments on behalf of a program of national interests which 
are common to all nations, and I had to deliver an extra 
one, in French, for the St. Paul and Minneapohs ladies. 
The subject was Paris. Here, as well as at St. Louis, the 
Frenchman has vanished but the French spirit remains. 
All the ladies' dresses and hats, which I admired greatly, 
came from the Rue de la Paix, by which I mean that several 
dressmakers and modistes go to Paris regularly every year 
to lay in a new stock of styles, which they reproduce with 
alterations in details according to their customers' tastes. 
Even this does not satisfy every one. There are a great 
many American women who prefer to make the journey 
to Paris, so as to choose from the originals. 

Mr. Hill's picture gallery is one of the finest in the 
world. At St. Louis I was reminded of France by Lar- 
gilliere's paintings, and at St. Paul by Corot, Delacroix, 
Troyon, Rousseau, Millet and Decaen ; I heard Archbishop 
Ireland speak eloquently in French, and there were further 
souvenirs in the names of such places as Lac-qui-parle. 
Marinette, Eau-claire, Petit-rocher, Fond-du-lac, Sainte- 
Croix, Saint-Cloud, Prairie-du-Chien, Faribault and Nicol- 
let, as well as many others to which an aroma of poe- 
try still clings — Defiance, Coeur d'Helene, Bonneville, 
Avalanche, Raquette, La Tourelle, Grosse Pointe, Mille 
lies, Parachute, St. Catherine and St. Augustine. 

French Influence 

At St. Paul, New Orleans and St. Louis, too, even those 
who do not speak French are proud of their descent from 
the French pioneers, as Mr. Hill so well expresses it in 
his ''Highways of Progress." ''It was not by accident," 
he writes, "that such cruel and rapacious gold seekers as 



196 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Cortez and Pizarro took part in the invasion of the south 
of our continent, while the pioneers of our Northwest were 
Hennepin, Marquette and La Salle. The least of their 
ambitions was to conquer an empire for their king, and their 
greatest was to win the hearts and minds of the Indian 
tribes. The result was that their serenity and mental 
elevation set a seal on the beginnings of our great central 
valley. After the explorers and missionaries came colonists 
of the same type — men of strong principles and splendid 
physique, whose virtues have colored the lives of their 
descendants." 

3. Madison. The Lakes, the Legislature and the University 
of the State of Wisconsin 

When our descendants fly over Wisconsin and Min- 
nesota in their aeroplanes during the starry nights of the 
future, they will observe that the whole district is studded 
with thousands of lakes. I can understand why so many 
Scandinavians have come to this part of America : it re- 
minds them of home. Madison, a very pretty place, is 
the capital of Wisconsin, though it is only about one 
twentieth of the size of Milwaukee. It is pleasantly situ- 
ated on two hills surrounded by water, like islands, and 
may be divided into unequal portions, consisting of the 
city, — which is not very large, — the legislature and the 
university. Its monuments, capitol, observatory, libraries, 
laboratories and museums stand in friendly juxtaposition, 
amid trees and shrubs, to small houses occupied by teachers 
and their students, to playgrounds and university clubs. 
The whole forms an amphitheater above the lakes that 
extend in a long expanse — now blue, now gray, now 
silvery, now golden, according to the state of the sky — 
spread out along the parks and up to the very threshold of 
the schools, and summon the young people to them. 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 1 97 

^'Our Future is on the Water^^ 

I believe in the influence of water on human education. 
Water and mountains create energy, self-control and 
purity. The emperor of Germany, to whose credit must 
be put a share of human weakness, shows that he appre- 
ciates this influence by selecting the coast of Norway for 
his annual period of retirement. From this coast came the 
bold Normans who ascended our European rivers and 
were the first to venture to cross the Atlantic. The 
emperor's remark, ''Our future is on the water," would 
have been true enough, had not this wise utterance 
been translated into official language and become 
twisted into meaning "Let us buy the greatest possible 
number of battleships." At Madison, as well as on the 
neighboring Canadian lakes, all the navigation is of the 
most peaceful kind and is one of the most popular sports 
with both young men and girl students. Here, as in all 
the Western universities, the system of coeducation of the 
sexes gives excellent results. It is the highest form of 
self-discipline. All these young people swim, row, skate 
and generally exercise themselves on the water. Every 
lake is made into a field of investigation or a race course. 
Variegated sails dart hither and thither, even when the 
lakes are frozen. I remember crossing another lake, in 
Canada, ten years ago with my eldest son, Arnaud, on a sail- 
ing sled. It was like a foretaste of aviation. In summer 
whole flotillas of canoes can be seen going out boldly into 
the middle of the lake, ascending the smallest tributaries, 
or lying snugly hid, each one in its own special harbor in 
the shadow of the banks. Children, youths and girls all 
paddle their frail varnished canoes. Later on, the re- 
membrance of these juvenile expeditions brings them back 
to the banks of the much-loved lake. White cottages and 
elegant villas are already being built, the reflection of their 



198 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

pretty outlines mingling with those of the trees on the sur- 
face of the water. Where the Indians once had their tents 
are now college men's camps, which may in time grow 
into houses and cities. 

I was the guest of the university at Madison, as I should 
have been at Minneapolis, if I had not been expected by 
friends at St. Paul. I had a room at the University Club, 
where I enjoyed the cordial way in which the teachers of 
all ages and the pupils lived together. It is a life of the 
simplest description, which suits Americans quite as well 
as, if not better than, living on a more elaborate scale. 

In the absence of the president I was presented by one 
of the professors, the very distinguished Dr. Paul Reinsch, 
to the state legislature, where I was invited to speak, and 
where the marked predominance of the German element 
was very far from preventing a most hearty reception 
being given to me, a Frenchman. 

The Constitution of the State of Wisconsin 

The constitution of the state of Wisconsin is no doubt 
based, Uke the constitutions of most of the Eastern states, 
on the old charters granted by England to her colonies. 
I do not propose to do more than touch upon this subject 
which, though dealt with in masterly style by James 
Bryce, is nevertheless an extremely complicated one, as 
every one of the forty-nine states in the Union has its own 
constitution. I will merely remark that here, as else- 
where, the legislature deals chiefly with the present, while 
the university represents the past and the future, and this 
is why I paid much more attention to the one than to the 
other. And this is why the Americans spend so much 
money on education and attach less importance to politics. 
Without going from one extreme to another, I may say 
that that part of the constitution of Wisconsin which deals 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL IQQ 

with parliamentary organization is inspired by a rather 
unfriendly feehng toward the representatives of the people. 
As every one knows, each state in the Union is represented 
by two assemblies, the senate and house of representa- 
tives. The senators and congressmen are elected directly, 
by the same electors, for two years. Any one is ehgible 
who has lived in the state a year and has a district vote. 
Each assembly makes its own rules, and validates the 
election of its members. The sittings are not always pub- 
He, each assembly being entitled to hold secret sessions, of 
which no official report is pubUshed. The legislature can- 
not authorize lotteries or divorces (other states used to go 
so far as to exclude men who did not beHeve in God, or in 
the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, from 
official employment) . Each member has to take oath that 
he will do his duty to the best of his abiUty. The legis- 
lature cannot authorize a citizen to change his name. It 
cannot permit the deviation of a road, order the establish- 
ment of a ferry or intercept communications. On the 
other hand, it alone can organize the state militia, and 
decide as to its strength, who shall serve in it and what 
rules and discipline shall be observed. The members of 
the legislature are paid $500 for each ordinary session. 
If they decide to hold an extraordinary session, their 
salaries are not increased. Their traveling expenses from 
their constituencies to Madison are paid. The constitu- 
tion stipulates that no stationery is to be suppKed to them 
at the public expense. 

The lieutenant governor, who, like the members of the 
legislature, is elected, is president of the senate. He has 
a right of veto, but must give way to the will of the two 
houses if there is a two-thirds majority of the members 
present. 

The senate consists of thirty-three members ; the house 
of representatives has one hundred. I observed that, out 



200 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

of the thirty-three senators, fifteen were lawyers. The 
others were farmers and business men. There were two 
chemists and only one doctor. 

The senate appoints six great permanent committees 
exclusive of the special committees on finance, justice, cor- 
porations, education and hygiene, the internal adminis- 
tration of the state (agriculture, forests, bridges, roads, 
game and fisheries, mihtary affairs and federal relations) 
and legislative procedure. 

The staff necessary for the working of the legislature is 
constituted very much as in the French parliament. The 
chief clerk corresponds to our Secretaire General de la 
Presidence, and the sergeant at arms, and his *' force" of 
little ushers or messenger boys, corresponds to our Secre- 
taire General de la Questure. 

The names of the representatives of the Press (most of 
them from Milwaukee) appear at the head of the year- 
book of the legislature. 

The two bodies which meet at Madison, like those 
in other states, at the time of my visit elected two senators 
to represent them for six years in the senate at Washington. 
Eleven members sit for two years only in the Federal 
Congress and are elected directly by the people, like the 
state representative and Hke all the high functionaries, 
from the lieutenant governor to the chief justice and the 
superintendent of schools. 

Great decorum was observed during the sitting at 
which I was present and had the honor to speak. The 
legislature and, generally speaking, the state of Wisconsin 
being amongst the most liberal and progressive of the 
United States, they are often given as a model, and that 
is why I thought I had to stop a little to observe them 
with particular attention. 

As usual, I made a careful inspection of the libraries and 
collections in which Americans have an exceptional talent 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 20I 

for bringing together the elements of national education in 
the form of well-arranged statistics and documentary evi- 
dence. This brings me back to the University of Wis- 
consin. 

Madison has one of the great state universities ; that is 
to say, unlike those that owe their foundation or develop- 
ment to private benefactors, it was created by the state. 
It was opened in 1850 and is kept up by a tax on real and 
personal property and by subsidies from the legislature. Its 
annual income is about a million dollars. 

After the legislative sitting, I attended a professors' 
luncheon, at which there was a free interchange of ideas. 
It can easily be imagined how anxious I was to obtain 
impressions from such meetings, to which the best intel- 
lects in the country have always brought me their observa- 
tions. While parhament represents the parochial spirit 
with all its rivalry and its tendency to exact advantages, 
as well as protection carried to extremes, jingoism and 
bidding for votes, the university, on the contrary, is a 
crucible for fusing together all the dissimilar elements 
which, constituting the population of the state, need to 
become nationalized before anything else, to federate, by 
means of mutual concessions, with other states, and, in a 
word, to look beyond private interests. It is quite natural 
that the student should hold aloof from the transitory and 
necessary excitement of politics ; the future is what matters 
to him. 

The great mistake made by critics who sit in judgment 
on the United States of to-day is that they do not see the 
preparation of the orderly conditions of the future behind 
the disorder inherent in every new system. This prepa- 
ration is the essential point, Europe is very largely in- 
terested in favoring it ; for an improved civiHzation will be 
the outcome of the present efforts, and every one will profit 
by it. 



202 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Political Economy, Social Science and Peace Organization 

I was struck by the important place taken at Madison, 
as in all the other universities, by the teaching of political 
economy and social science. My addresses were nothing 
more than a natural complement to this teaching. To dis- 
cuss the production and circulation of wealth would not be 
very practical unless some attempt were made to organize 
permanent relations between producing and trading nations. 
The two things are part of the same whole. Peace organi- 
zation is the final chapter of political economy. All the 
theories of economists are reduced to nothing by war. 
Madison deserves its good reputation ; it is faithful to the 
principles of the President whose name it is proud to bear, 
and to the poHcy of '^ reciprocal good will" in conformity 
with his 1811 Message to Congress. Professor Reinsch 
helped Mr. Elihu Root to constitute the Pan-American 
Union as a prelude to something better. That means a 
great deal. 

After the speeches that followed the luncheon, I went to 
the great Gymnasium hall, which had been made ready 
for my lecture with a care that promised well for its success. 
Everything had been prepared well in advance, and placards 
had even been hung from the trees in the city. The hall 
was full, and the audience was a-quiver with the enthusiasm 
of youth. There is no accustoming one's self to the feehng 
of emotion, which returns in ever varying forms, on these 
occasions. Here the audience was responsive, attentive 
and curious. There were constant outbursts of strident, 
modulated shouts of approval, contributed by every one in 
obedience to an invisible signal. I could not understand 
a word of them. This kind of greeting is called a "sky- 
rocket," and I wonder whether it is a survival of an Indian 
custom. Be that as it may, I applauded instead of speak- 
ing. I understood the intention, if not the words, and 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 203 

that the ice was broken. It was a fine opportunity, I 
thought, to talk of justice to an audience of young men and 
girls who had probably been taught to respect the Ger- 
manic cult of brute force ; but I soon found I was talking 
to friends, and I was frantically applauded when I said 
that it is no longer possible nowadays to enslave a man, 
much less a nation, and that, sooner or later, the liberty 
which is supposed to be dead and buried revives. Never 
have I realized more strongly than at Madison the honor 
of being called upon to instruct the rising generation, and 
all the responsibility incumbent upon the instructor. 

In America music is not always so savage as the college 
students' rhythmical yells. It is, on the contrary, in 
general favor, especially here and in the cities populated by 
Scandinavians and Germans. We will speak of it later. 
The universities have their band and especially their choral 
societies. The young men all sing more or less — or 
rather, let me say, nearly all — and so do the girls. Sing- 
ing is not only an art with them but a form of gymnastics 
that straightens the back, widens the shoulders, deepens the 
chest, and gives the voice more power and the expression 
more openness, just as dancing, which is extremely popular 
in the United States, gives the movements more grace and 
assurance. 

Again the Militia 

After my lecture, and before getting into an automobile, 
to take a trip round the lake, I saw the militia drill — an- 
other form of imparting discipline and flexibility. All these 
young men, in their smart blue uniforms, gave me the im- 
pression of a people that would rise like one man to defend 
their country if the word were given. Let any aggressor 
beware of this much-criticized militia. At 5 o'clock 
next morning the same young men (I did not see the 
girls), aroused me by their shouts, as cheerful as swallows' 



204 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

notes. I looked out and saw that, in spite of the rain that 
was falling, they were placing the national game of baseball. 

4. Baseball. 

The whole of North America is intensely interested, and 
with good reason, in baseball, a game I should like to in- 
troduce into France. It is played all over the United 
States by two teams of nine men each, with an unHmited 
number of substitutes, the various positions in the field 
being allotted strictly in accordance with capacity and long 
experience. The players' object, after the ball is in play, 
is to get first to the bases at the four angles of a diamond 
marked out in a very large inclosure. On each side the 
principal positions are held by specialists; on one, the 
pitcher and the catcher, and, on the other, the batter. 
From the center of the diamond, the pitcher hurls the ball 
at his comrade the catcher, who stands just behind the 
corner of the diamond, or home plate, padded from head 
to foot and wears a special kind of glove and a strong mask. 
His business is to catch the ball, very much as a circus 
athlete stops a cannon ball. Between the pitcher and the 
catcher is the batter, who stands firmly, waits for the ball 
and does his best to hit it as far as possible with a masterly 
stroke of his bat. If he succeeds, as he often does, he takes 
advantage of the few moments in which the ball is fi>'ing 
through space to run to the first base, and then the second 
and third if he has time ; but one of his far-distant op- 
ponents catches the ball and throws it to one of the men 
at the base, who can thus forestall the batter, and it re- 
mains to be seen whether the batter will be the first to 
reach the base. A whole city-full of people — sometimes 
as many as 40,000 spectators — in great cities hke Pitts- 
burgh or Chicago, turns out to see one of these matches, 
cheer the players and give way to enthusiasm or exaspera- 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 205 

tion. The runner, in his efforts to beat the speed of the 
ball, generally throws himself at full length on the ground 
and just touches the base with his finger or foot, or misses 
it by an inch ; and then there is a terrific outburst of ex- 
citement, shouting, stamping and gesticulating among the 
spectators who cannot always tell whether the runner is 
successful or not. In the big matches, when two famous 
teams are playing, and when one city is pitted against an- 
other, Brooklyn against St. Louis, for instance ; when two 
champion clubs, two baseball ''giants" or " phenomenons " 
stand face to face in front of their anxious supporters, the 
crowd cannot contain itself. But, behind the catcher, a 
young man, quite different from the rest, stands motion- 
less. He wears a long coat, a breastplate and a mask. He 
watches the game, and when the disputing over a run 
is at its height and the crowd threatens to invade the 
ground, he intervenes. A sign from him stops the shouting 
and restores quiet. He decides who has won and who has 
lost. 

Who is this mysterious personage and extraordinary 
authority ? He is the umpire. He is selected from among 
the college students, or, on great occasions, among the 
most celebrated professionals and best judges of the game. 
He is brought all the way from Boston or Chicago, and he 
is paid like a man who has a reputation to keep up. I 
have more than once used him as an example, to the great 
delight of my hearers. I have demonstrated that if it is 
possible to stop the rush of the baseball players (who 
must not dispute the umpire, even if he is wrong) and re- 
strain crowds electrified by the excitement of the gam.e, it 
is much less difficult to stop two equally civilized nations 
whose governments are preparing to mobilize them. It is 
a question of education in governmental responsibiUty — a 
question of mutual interest properly understood, and also 
of discipline. After I had demonstrated this proposition 



2o6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

all over the United States, an objection was raised, to the 
effect that the umpire is sometimes rather badly treated 
by the crowd. "Kill the umpire!" was heard not very 
long ago. In America, no doubt, as in other countries, a 
man who has lost his case does not deny himself the pleas- 
ure of saying what he thinks about the judge, but it is 
none the less true that the whole organization of baseball, 
which is no less popular than the barbarous bull-fighting 
in Spain and is infinitely more general, is based on absolute 
and undisputed obedience to the umpire. The same is true 
of many other games, notably football. It is an excellent 
form of physical and moral training. 

Early Risers 

In this connection I may remark that the Americans are 
early risers — another point they have in common with the 
French. A nation that rises early is not a frivolous but an 
industrious one, and ought to succeed. One day at The 
Hague I heard one of my colleagues, who was of course 
one of my compatriots, criticizing the youth of his country. 
One of the foreigners present, the first Japanese delegate, 
differed from him. ''I went through part of my course of 
study," he said, ''in the Latin quarter, with many other 
foreigners, and I noticed that the French were always up 
first." France is the object of all sorts of purely superficial 
criticisms. Because Paris, or rather a part of Paris, the 
boulevards, is a meeting place of foreigners and provincials, 
who come here to spend their money or go through their 
apprenticeship to ''Hfe," people imagine that this kind of 
life is that of the French nation. The dyspeptic reveler 
who returns home, plucked bare, inveighs against the 
modern Babylon. He has seen all the cabarets, low 
music halls and forbidden places, drunk the cup of morbid 
curiosity to the dregs, and religiously gone through the 



THE TWIN CITIES. MADISON. BASEBALL 207 

round of pleasure ; and then he finds fault, not with him- 
self or with other foreign revelers, but with France. 

The International Clubs 

After the dinner and lecture at the club I was urged to 
finish the evening at another club, the International. It 
was not the first I had visited in the United States. Noth- 
ing brings out more clearly the spirit of tolerance and fra- 
ternity prevaiKng in American universities than these asso- 
ciations, which enable young Americans of different states 
not only to meet one another, but to come into contact with 
foreign students and to know and Hke them. The presi- 
dent of the club at Madison was a very cultured Chinese, 
C. C. Wang, and its members, in addition to Americans, 
included Russians, Poles, Swiss, Belgians, ItaHans, Japanese, 
even Englishmen, Indians, Malagasys and Filipinos — sixty 
different nationaHties or races. 

The " Marseillaise " 

These young men greeted me with the " Marseillaise." 
They pressed my hands as if I had been Jean Jacques 
Rousseau ! Whatever evil may be said against France in 
their hearing, they will pay no attention. France is, to 
them, not a country but an idea, a program and a word of 
command. France means revolution, and they know well 
enough that society will never have anything good to say 
about revolutions. 

Seeds of Liberty 

At the same time I could not help giving some friendly 
advice to these young men. I tremble for their future, 
because I can see the seed of Uberty, which they cultivate 
in these American universities, germinating in them ; and 
it is probable that when they return home, this seed will 



2o8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

bear fruit in the shape of insurrection, sedition and every- 
thing that brings men to the gallows. They merely smiled 
at my warnings. ''Look out," I said, ''when you return 
home, and don't repeat all that you hear here." One of 
them cleverly repHed : "We will retain the impression and 
not the words." 

And now for Milwaukee, Wisconsin's German city, 
where at least three fourths of the inhabitants are Ger- 
mans. I have been preparing for this visit for a long time. 
I shall now be able to take a good look at what was the 
triumph but is now, in my opinion, the decline of German 
influence.^ 

1 1 have not considered it right to change a single word in the following 
chapter. The war has brought its confirmation and justified the warning 
that I wrote. I confine myself to a simple summary, as conclusion for the 
chapter of the incontrovertible proofs that have been established : First, 
that a great majority of the German people did not wish for war; second, 
that Germany has been led to her ruin by German militarism. (March, 
1915-) 



CHAPTER XI 

MILWAUKEE. THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OF GERMAN 

INFLUENCE 

I. The City and the Surroundings. The well-deserved success of 
the Germans. France' s disasters, but no decadence. The great 
revenge. German militarism against Germ.an idealism. The 
Americans and the Alsace-Lorraine question. Tired of "Might 
makes Right." German imperialism, a threat and a disap- 
pointment. — 2. The Catastrophe. The balance sheet of war. 
The culmination of German militarism. 

I. The City and the Surroundings 

The hospitality of Milwaukee was no less anticipatory 
than that of the other cities. Representatives of the Press 
came halfway to meet me and subject me in the train to 
the delights of being interviewed. One of them, the editor 
of the leading German paper, did his work so well — how 
he managed it I fail to understand — that I had been in 
Milwaukee only two hours when I saw my ''statements" 
standing out as the ''splash" in large type on the front 
page of his paper. My remarks were reproduced with 
scrupulous accuracy, although the subject was a delicate 
one : the good influence that might be exerted by broad- 
minded Germans in America over Germans in Europe. 

A deputation from my reception committee met me at 
the depot, and drove with me to the City Club, where I 
had promised to speak on municipal organization in France. 
After my first address, I made a motor trip along the lake- 
side, or rather I should have made it had we not been 
p 209 



2IO AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

stopped by the fog that hid sky, water, rocks and trees 
from view. All we could do was to reach the girls' col- 
lege (Downer College), where, as it happened, the boys 
from a neighboring school had come to give a concert. 
In place of coeducation, quite a different system prevails 
here. The girls are perfectly free, and they look after 
their own discipline, without assistance from their teachers, 
but, except as regards visits and occasional concerts, the 
rule is that no man, not even as a teacher, shall enter the col- 
lege. This is a very strict rule, forming part of a system 
which the excellent principal. Miss Ellen Sabin, summed 
up for my benefit as follows : ''No men, no wine, no cards." 
The result was a lay convent. In the evening I once more 
deKvered my address in a large church, known as the 
'' Plymouth Church" ; and I am still filled with admiration 
for the tolerance with which my audience, consisting largely 
of Germans, received my remarks and even my criticisms ; 
and how warmly they approved my expression of the desire 
for a mutually acceptable reconcihation, based on mutual 
concessions, between France and Germany, in the interest 
of the world at large. 

To go from Madison to Milwaukee is like returning to 
town from the country. Milwaukee is a large port that 
has become a great city, thanks to the traffic on Lake 
Michigan and the other Great Lakes, forming as they do an 
inland sea into which the Milwaukee River flows. It acts 
as a canal, hke the Meuse at Rotterdam, and the great 
volume of water from this river and its tributaries finds 
its way into the heart of the business districts. The en- 
trance to the port and the canals is protected by massive 
breakwaters, and the largest vessels can moor at the rail- 
road wharves, close to the stores and factories. The 
German breweries at Milwaukee supply a large part of 
the United States, without reckoning the flour, grain and 
pork sent out from this city. Any one might spend hours 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 211 

in following the movements of these monster ships in 
Milwaukee. Swing bridges of the most modern kind Kft 
up or open to let them pass. Roadways, over which 
electric tramways run, stand bolt upright or move on a 
pivot over an archway to make room for them ; and when 
the boats have gone through, the great channel is bridged 
again, and traffic over it is resumed. This combina- 
tion — which is also carried out with the same success 
in Germany — of water, road and rail traffic partly ac- 
counts for the splendid development of Milwaukee, Trad- 
ing vessels are not the only ones to go backwards and 
forwards through the city. When the fog clears away, 
one can see all sorts of pleasure boats and attractive ex- 
cursion steamers with three or four decks. These are 
utiHzed on holidays by all the young people in the city 
and their parents, not to mention a band, to go to 
various places on the banks of the lake and forget the 
twenty-story houses, the noise and the strenuous work 
of factory or office. 

The surroundings of Milwaukee, especially the precipi- 
tous shores of the lake, are very picturesque. On a fine 
day they suggest the Riviera or Biarritz, and in summer 
they provide sandy beaches and sea bathing. There is a 
general tendency among Americans to avoid the original 
mistake — due to the lack of rapid transport at that time 
— of crowding houses and factories too closely together 
without leaving room even for a tree, as in New York. 
Milwaukee is surrounded by parks with running water 
and many-colored vegetation. Generally speaking, open 
spaces, playgrounds and places for promenades, excur- 
sions and camping, such as Yellowstone Park, have become 
one of the principal subjects of interest and one of the 
main factors in the health and national activity of the 
United States. Henceforward, the people will live not on 
top of but beside one another. 



212 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Gymnastic, rifle and musical clubs, similar to those in 
Germany, flourish here, Hke German trade; for it is clear 
that every German in the United States is a client and a 
business representative of his mother country. He calls 
for and places German goods. He creates needs similar 
to his own ; he provides his countrymen with information 
as to American habits (I know many German cities of 
to-day which remind me of the finest American towns) , and 
he explains to them the best means of obtaining a hold 
on the American market. It might be hastily concluded, 
from this, that Milwaukee is a German city, although 
founded by a Frenchman, Solomon Juneau, whose name 
we have already met with on the Pacific. Milwaukee, in 
1835, was merely a depot for hides. It now has a popu- 
lation of nearly 400,000, of whom 300,000 are Germans, 
the rest being Americans, Scandinavians, etc. ; but the 
question is to know what a German city of French origin 
in the United States is becoming. It may be with towns 
as with plants. French seed brings forth different fruits 
in foreign soil and has to be renewed. In any case, I pro- 
pose to discuss this question impartially. France, Ger- 
many and the United States have reached a sufficiently 
high degree of civilization to be told the truth. 

The Well-deserved Success oj the Germans 

The Germans have succeeded because they deserved to 
succeed. Toughened by their centuries of resistance to the 
hostility of men and of circumstances, and confident in their 
future they produce plenty of fine children, who inherit their 
good constitutions. Whilst the population of France, deci- 
mated by fruitless wars and exhausted by its incessant effort 
to fill up the gaps and by being kept in a continual state 
of tension, fails to increase, Germany's is growing every 
year to the extent of several French departments, and it 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 213 

is quite in the natural order of things that Germans should 
take the places formerly held by peasants from Normandy 
and Anjou. These German emigrants, who were plain, 
unpretentious workers, appeared on the scene at a time 
when the United States needed farmers. They rendered 
immense services in the agricultural districts, and after- 
wards they populated the cities to which they brought 
their methods, their traditions and their habits of organiza- 
tion and association. While I was in New York, I saw a 
gathering of German societies in America, of which there 
were no less than 5000. They are numerous at Milwaukee 
and are deserving of praise. The results obtained by the 
musical clubs, for instance, are admirable. In educational 
matters in general, and particularly the application of 
social science principles from infancy onwards, they have 
obtained general recognition for their kindergarten work 
and their organization of games, hygiene, etc., in schools. 
As regards secondary and higher education, the facts are 
self-evident. Let us take as an example the universities 
founded in the United States in the course of the last 
century. Where were they to look for guidance? Ma- 
dame de Stael had made Germany known to them, and 
it is clear that the great universities of the Germanic 
Confederation were, together with Oxford and Cambridge, 
models all ready for a group of young federated and demo- 
cratic states, rootedly hostile to the imperial system of 
concentration. We must not forget, also, that these 
young states have not yet shown themselves either able 
or willing to agree to the constitution, at Washington, of 
a great national university superior to all the others. They 
took care not to go to Paris for a system of which they 
were more afraid than of any other, especially as they had 
only to choose among Gottingen, Konigsberg, Jena, Leip- 
zig, Heidelberg, Tubingen, Bonn and many other inde- 
pendent universities. The foreign poHcy of the Second 



214 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Empire, beginning with our unfortunate expedition to 
Mexico, was hardly calculated to reconcile Americans to 
us, not to mention our then general disdain for foreign 
questions, our ignorance of foreign languages, and our 
somewhat natural dislike of leaving our country. The 
result was that, though they had received from France so 
many seeds which had brought forth fruit abundantly, the 
Americans nevertheless sought elsewhere for emigrants and 
ideas. 

France's Disasters^ hut no Decadence 

The fact is that as our disasters coincided with Germany's 
victories, the Americans more or less believed, like many 
others, in France's decadence; but they are getting over 
this mistake, and now we find France giving them the very 
best kind of higher education and beginning to take her 
great revenge. Misfortune develops nations, as it does 
the best kind of men, while success is a shoal on which they 
are apt to run aground. In spite of appearances, every 
one is now compelled to admit that France is not a frivolous 
nation, and that, on the contrary, she must be extraordi- 
narily industrious and idealistic to have once more and so 
completely recovered from her disasters in the space of 
forty years. In spite of incessant attacks, which we our- 
selves began, we have seen the French Republic take over 
and pay the debts bequeathed to it, — the ransom of the 
Empire, — reorganize its finances and its army, complete 
its railways, regenerate its educational system, introduce 
new methods of cultivation and build up a new colonial 
empire for itself in Africa and Asia. In spite of all this, 
and notwithstanding the increase in various forms of 
rivalry that spring up on all sides and lead to inevitable 
complications, we have been wise enough to regain, little 
by little, what we had lost in the world's estimation, con- 
clude alliances^ make friendships and gain general esteem. 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 21$ 

Our savants, such as Berthelot, Pasteur and Curie, have 
rendered world-wide service. We have shown that we 
possess artists and men of action. Our explorers have 
proved themselves as great as their predecessors. Our 
aviators and sailors have defied death in the air and under 
the waters, and our spirit of inventiveness has evinced 
itself in every field of activity. The combined effect of 
all these triumphs of individual effort by Frenchmen has 
eventually proved greater than those of brute force, and 
since then, the Germans have begun to feel the effects 
of a moral malady that they cannot understand. It can, 
nevertheless, be explained. They are paying the price 
of their victories, as all conquerors do, and the greater 
their pride the higher will be the price. 
Let us examine the facts : 

The Great Revenge 

People are tired of German pride, and it has been a 
disappointment to the world at large. The triumph of 
mere force has a brutalizing effect. It succeeded in im- 
posing on superficial minds, and even on the universities, 
for a time, but it has finally created a feeling of aversion, 
because it ends in a contradiction, and consequently paraly- 
sis, of the progress of science. This is true everywhere, and 
even in Germany, where the highest thinkers have come 
more or less under the ban of suspicion, — I might almost 
say a moral boycott, — to the great disadvantage of the 
country's intellectual, moral and material progress. The 
immense development of German commerce during the 
last few years is a proof of admirable vitality, but it is all 
the more regrettable to see this vitality directed towards 
violence, instead of being beneficent, as it should be. 
There is a general grudge against Germany for turning 
her back on her vocation. 



2l6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

German Militarism against German Idealism 

German militarism is in a fair way to stifle German 
idealism, and this is a spectacle that causes a feeHng of re- 
volt among many men with independent habits of thought. 
It has been, until now, more or less, a merely internal re- 
volt, no doubt, but it is not confined to mental processes. 
The mayor of Milwaukee, at the time of my visit, was a 
socialist, and so was the senator for Milwaukee — a 
striking coincidence in so German a community. Here 
is another example. Germany, while eager for expansion, 
does not admit that Alsace and Lorraine are justified in 
complaining that their inhabitants, a fine class of people, 
were dealt with like a flock of sheep, just after the United 
States had gone through civil war for the sake of negro 
emancipation. Germany compels Alsatians to repudiate 
even their family ties and to break with their most sacred 
affections for the sake of calling themselves German. She 
makes them write their names in German and speak Ger- 
man. She treats Danes and Poles in the same way. 
She does not realize that, by so doing, she alienates not 
so much France (let us leave my country outside the 
argument), Alsace, Poland and Denmark, but also the 
spirit of the times, including the liberal spirit in Germany. 
However indulgent public opinion may be, it is being 
everywhere operated upon by ferments which escape the 
well-known clear-sightedness of governments, but are all the 
more to be feared. The final result is that all Germany's 
strength is turned against herself and morally excludes 
her from a world in which she is looking for her position. 

Let me repeat that, in saying this, I am not speaking 
merely as a Frenchman, but in the general interest, assum- 
ing that I can cease to take to heart the grievances of 
Alsace and Lorraine after acting with my friends on behalf 
of the Bulgarians, Serbians, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 217 

Arabs. As time goes on, the Alsace-Lorraine question 
becomes more and more acute for Germany. We see it 
every day. It does not arise between France and Germany, 
inasmuch as it was settled by treaty ; it stands between 
Germany and Alsace, between Germany and all partisans 
of individual liberty throughout the world. It is something 
more than the Dreyfus case, and, Hke it, cannot be disposed 
of by the mere assertion that it has no existence. 

The Americans and the Alsace-Lorraine Question 

It was possible for Americans to ignore the Alsace- 
Lorraine question so long as it concerned only France and 
Germany. They were careful not to take sides. They 
were neutral, as they had an evident right to be. They 
supposed that this was the way to obtain peace in course 
of time; but they will now be obliged, like every other 
nation, to say what they think about it. They are already 
giving judgment inwardly. They have done so by the 
mere operation of their system of liberty, and in this way 
they are affording constant encouragement to some, and 
fresh cause for irritation to others, in Germany. 

One single conviction is sufficient to enhghten milKons 
of independent minds. No one can estimate the effect 
of a protest that acts like a continual conspiracy. It is 
the drop of water that gradually wears away the dike 
and demolishes it. I met a Dane who had been an exile 
from his country since the war in 1864, and naturalized 
himself as an American rather than become a German. 
He has not confined himself to regretting his country, but 
for nearly fifty years he has carried on a constant and 
vigorous campaign, by speeches and writings, and has 
met with considerable success in spreading his hatred for 
Germany. This is what no government foresees as a 
consequence of a treaty. 



2l8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

One day, while I was traveling between Pittsburgh and 
Philadelphia and was reading my mail, a little old man 
came up to me and asked me, in French, if he might see 
my French newspapers. He told me that he, Hke this 
Dane, had left his country, Alsace, rather than become a 
German, but he was of a less combative nature, though he 
was delighted to see how the Prussification of Alsace had 
failed. He told me about the pilgrimages he made regularly 
to his home in Phalsbourg. "When I was a boy," he said, 
" France let us speak German, French or Alsatian just as 
we pleased, and we did not use French much ; but now 
that German is obHgatory, do you know what happens? 
The children learn German at school, the shop-signs are 
in German, and the streets are German, by order, but 
every one speaks French indoors." 

Tired of ^^ Might makes Right ^^ 

A great many people are actively an ti- German or sym- 
pathize with an ti- German ideas in other spheres, even, 
and especially, among those who admire German culture. 
The German idealism with which they are saturated has 
made them all the more severe in their condemnation of 
Germany's reversion to brute force. They are visibly 
taking the French side, and they are being sent to us by 
the Germans themselves. 

''We are tired of it," said one of them to me, at Harvard. 
''Tired of what?" 

"Tired of 'might makes right.'" 

Another, at Baltimore, — an octogenarian Hellenist, 
who enjoys the veneration of generations inspired by his 
views, — cannot console himself for what he calls the 
degradation of Germany. He feels that the ideals of his 
youth have been profaned. Germany was the cradle 
of his learning and intellect. "I cannot recognize the 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 219 

country," he told me. ^'I have ceased going there. I 
cannot even understand their language now. They have 
invented new words to suit their new state of mind and 
to express vulgar ideas. They have no interest in anything 
but lucrative careers, profits and money making. They 
have lost their ideal, and they don't care. The greatest 
chastisement is the abasement of the national character." 
Let the German government beware, and cease to com- 
plain of the world's ill will. The government is alone 
responsible for the adverse judgments which are becoming 
universal and are delivered quite as often in Germany 
as in the United States, and perhaps more often. Many 
Germans suffer Hke the old American professor at Balti- 
more and feel humiliated by the prevailing discredit attach- 
ing to everything they have learned to respect. This does 
not apply merely to "intellectuals." The people are 
instinctively on their side. The German government can 
no longer stifle these protests or let loose the dogs of war 
for a mere yes or no. Its opposition to the work of the 
Hague arbitration tribunal, and the voluntary isolation to 
which it holds fast in token of open resistance to progress, 
accepted even by the Russian government, have singled 
it out for universal mistrust. No government can bar 
the way with impunity to the aspirations of all nations, 
including the German nation. I remember how delighted 
the German porter at my hotel at The Hague was whenever 
the representatives of his country were defeated at the 
Congress. He positively beamed, rubbed his hands, and 
exclaimed : "We^ll see !" It made me feel quite awkward. 
At Essen, in the heart of the big gun and armor-plate 
district, the Krupp works are at the mercy of the 30,000 
workmen and are quite unprotected by troops. The reason 
is, according to the directors, that if they were rash enough 
to ask for soldiers, the latter would be either socialized 
or stoned inside of a week. 



2 20 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

German Imperialism : A Threat and a Disappointment 

None the less, the German government still thinks it- 
self compelled to pose as a conqueror, without realizing 
that this attitude is generally objectionable. It is both a 
threat and a disappointment. The more Germanophile 
Americans were, the more hostile they are becoming to 
German militarism. To militarize a great country, and 
especially one that has produced such men as Kant, Goethe 
and Beethoven, is bad enough, and is a crime that civiliza- 
tion can hardly endure; but to militarize the world is 
too much. Just as independent minds revolted against 
French imperialism under the First and Second Empires, 
and against English imperialism, during the Transvaal 
war, so they are uneasy over German imperialism. 

This uneasiness has brought about a formidable com- 
bination of the latent and scattered forces of opinion. 
Impatience is beginning to manifest itself, and also a very 
dangerous kind of general excitement. Rather than live 
under a sword of Damocles held suspended by the will 
of a single man, a great many respectable people are saying : 
"Let us have it over ! " Let me take France as an example. 
She has become peaceful as well as Republican. She has 
no feeling of hatred for the Germans, and would ask for 
nothing better than to come to an understanding with 
them, by means of mutual concessions, if they knew how 
to set about it and gain her friendship by making them- 
selves liked instead of feared ; but no ; the Germans growl 
at every opportunity, like big guns about which one cannot 
make sure whether they are merely practicing or firing in 
earnest. They reproach us with the complaints from 
Alsace, and they give us to understand that, next time, 
they will take Burgundy and Cherbourg together with 
Rotterdam, Antwerp and the rest. The result is that 
there is not a single Frenchman of my acquaintance who 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 221 

is not ready to give his last cent and his last son to repel 
a German invasion. These are not mere words. When 
we see Frenchmen, one after the other, readily giving 
their lives for the mere joy of contributing to human prog- 
ress, we can form some idea of the heroism the same men 
would display to save France and liberty at the same time. 
It is exactly the same in the United States, and also among 
the youth of the Slavonic race. 

The Germans are on the wrong tack. They are alienating 
everybody, not through anti-Germanism, but through mis- 
trust of their system, and to avoid sudden conflict with them, 
just as one would avoid a lout who tried to make people 
dance whether they wanted to do so or not. Nothing could 
be more logical. In 1870, a great many Americans were 
glad of what was called the victory of the German school- 
master. To-day the schoolmaster himself is in danger. He 
is the spirit of the times, and every one will defend him. 

To this the pessimists retort that all the platonic protests 
in the world will not keep Germany's strength from proving 
victorious. This is more than doubtful. I once told 
the elite of Germany not to shout ''To Paris!" as we 
shouted "To Berlin !" That kind of thing does not bring 
good luck. If the worst comes to the worst, the Germans 
would have great difficulty in making themselves the master. 
It will take a great deal of time, money and blood ; and war 
will probably be followed by revolution. What interest can 
the German imperial dynasty have in letting that revolu- 
tion loose and paving the way for a confederation which 
would be not merely Germanic but general? Surely it 
would be better to dispense with a war and a revolution, 
and reap the honors and profits of the inevitable denoue- 
ment to which, in this age of association, we are marching 
onward. 

To sum up : the whole of modern democracy, including 
that of Germany, is against German militarism. There 



222 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

is no more doubt about it.^ The United States, who were 
glad of German colonization and rightly ask for it still, 
do not wish to have it degenerate into domination, and 
it is for this reason that they are reverting to the French 
language, ideas and spirit — that is to say, the human 
spirit. It is a natural movement, carrying with it the 
Germans themselves, beginning with the emperor who 
speaks better French than millions of Frenchmen. The 
French spirit does not imply numbers or mass or force ; it is 
the ferment sought for by present-day civilization, and no 
form of violence can get the better of it. If the Germans 
desire to resume the place they once occupied in the confi- 
dence of the '' intellectuals" whose sentiments were so won- 
derfully expressed by Renan, all they have to do is to become 
themselves again, and raise themselves above the vulgar herd 
by their intellect, knowledge and genius. All this certainly 
cannot be done in a day, but they should not forget that 
time, on which they rely, is working against them. It in- 
creases their population, but it will diminish their influence 
and complicate their policy until it becomes a chaos, to the 
detriment of themselves and of the world at large. 

1 The war has not in the least altered my opinion on this point. The 
scandalous doings at Zabern — to mention only one instance — had already 
caused a conflict between insolent German militarism and nearly the whole 
body of German opinion. But the pan-Germans, warned by this notoriously 
evident defeat, adopted more successful tactics. They took care not to 
consult public opinion ; they led it away on a false scent and hoodwinked 
it by a long series of maneuvers so that, when once it had embarked on 
its course, it could not draw back. They confronted it with a/a*/ accom- 
pli, and compelled it to declare itself, not for or against them but for or 
against the Fatherland. This is only too clear ; but the complete aberra- 
tion of German opinion after the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia does not 
affect what it was before that event. We know what it was, not only by 
our own observations but by those of the French Ambassador in Berlin, 
who has given ofl&cial evidence that war was desired in Germany by a 
minority, while the great majority, the mass of the people, did not want it. 
This testimony is so clear that I feel bound to cite the substance of it at 
the end of this chapter by extracts from the last French Yellow Book. 
(March, 191 5.) 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 223 

2. The Catastrophe ^ 

These warnings and a great many others, repeated with 
the energy of despair, have been in vain. The war which 
everybody was unanimous in dreading, and which might 
have been averted, has broken out. The very progress 
made by the principles of association, conciHation, justice 
and peace induced the partisans of war to hasten the 
denouement. They now have the war they wanted. 
Europe is covered with ruins and watered with blood from 
east to west. The war has destroyed treasures intrusted 
to the guardianship of civiHzation, as well as private prop- 
erty and the most valuable and harmless lives. It has 
transformed the seas into cemeteries and strewn them with 
death traps as far away as the Pacific. It has even made 
the sky a battlefield. It has paralyzed the world's activity, 
and, what is still worse, it has killed beHef in treaties, and 
it has thrown the nations back into barbarism. Those 
who were guilty of this indescribable crime are now liable 
to be called to account by their victim, humanity. Who 
are these criminals? 

Diplomatic documents answer this question so far as 
Germany is concerned. We know from the French Yellow 
Book, already mentioned, that the great mass of the Ger- 
man people was for peace; but the French Ambassador 
does not confine himself to this statement. In his note of 
July 30, preceding his dispatch of Nov. 22, 191 3, he speci- 
fied the component parts of this mass. To begin with, 
there were the Emperor and his government, who, in many 
other passages of the first chapter of the Yellow Book 
are shown as facing the furious attacks of the pan- Germans 
and signing an agreement with France on Nov. 4, 191 1, 
concerning Morocco and the Congo. Here we have 

^ The remainder of this chapter was v;ritten after the outbreak of war. 
(March, 191 5.) 



224 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

nothing less than a phenomenal event to be noted. This 
treaty, which represented a great effort on both sides 
towards better relations, was represented by the jingo 
newspapers on both sides — and these papers are by far 
the richest and most influential — as a deep national humih- 
ation for both France and Germany. 

All the dispatches in the first chapter of the Yellow Book 
are of historical value. Never has it been better demon- 
strated officially how the advocates of competition in 
armaments have succeeded in deceiving public opinion 
on both sides of the frontier, and how an unmistakably 
pacific achievement has been misrepresented on both sides 
as something shameful and dangerous. I do not think 
there has ever been a more scandalous instance of com- 
plete and deliberate perversion of the truth. The Franco- 
German agreement on Nov. 4, 191 1, has been systemati- 
cally used as a starting point for an inevitable war ; and 
henceforth, as M. Jules Cambon wrote on Nov. 22, 191 3, 
in sending his government a clear warning from the King 
of the Belgians, the Emperor William changed completely 
and "ceased to be a partisan of peace." 

As the Emperor and his government thus underwent 
a complete change, we can understand why the peaceful 
and discipHned mass of the nation, already poisoned by 
the doctrines of Trietschke and Bernhardi, which were 
included in the educational system, followed the process of 
evolution as one man. In any case, we can say that the 
peace-loving mass of the German people had hitherto been 
made up as follows : 

(i) The great bulk of the workmen, artisans and peasants. 

(2) That part of the nobility which had no direct con- 
cern with the army and was engaged in industrial enter- 
prises, this section being sufficiently enlightened to realize 
the disastrous consequences of a great war, even if their 
country were victorious. 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 225 

(3) A large number of manufacturers, business men and 
financiers of average standing. 

(4) The Poles, Alsatians, Lorrainers and inhabitants of 
Schleswig-Holstein : peoples conquered but not assim- 
ilated. 

(s) The governments and governing classes of the great 
southern states. 

These five classes of peace-loving Germans, headed by 
the Emperor and his principal ministers, really formed 
almost the whole of peaceful Germany. Who, after this, 
will still venture to assert that there was no power for 
peace in Germany and that there was nothing for it but to 
let the war party have its way ? 

This war party is described, like the peace party, in the 
dispatch already alluded to. It is shown to be numerically 
the weaker but to have become the stronger in virtue of 
its boldness and its organization. The dispatch divided 
it up as follows : 

(i) Landed proprietors who wanted war as a means of 
averting socialist taxes and delaying the democratizing of 
Germany. 

(2) The upper middle class, also antidemocratic, who 
believed war would create a diversion of the social tendency 
of the times. 

(3) The manufacturers of cannon and armor plates, 
big business men who wanted wider markets, and bankers 
who speculated on the anticipated war indemnity and 
regarded war as a good stroke of business. 

(4) The Bismarckites, officials of all kinds, and the 
party of retired officers and officials. 

(5) The universities (with the exception of a few distin- 
guished men) and the advocates of German culture and 
German superiority. 

(6) The rancorous partisans of war, notably embittered 
diplomatists thirsting for revenge. 



226 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Such were, in short, the two German forces. They 
were far from being equal. On the one side were vast 
numbers but without insight or organization ; on the other, 
a clever conspiracy inspired by interested motives. 

Those disinterested men who did not hesitate to warn 
the German majority and to raise the alarm in other coun- 
tries can now stand proudly before the tribunal of public 
opinion against the maleficent beings who have given the 
world to fire and sword simply to satisfy their pride and 
their material interests. 

The United States, which live by the light of the old 
world's experiences, will be able to discern on which side 
is duty and on which side is crime. 

The Balance Sheet of War 
The Culmination of German Militarism 

The United States are already in a position to draw up 
the balance sheet of the war, even though the latter be 
unfinished, and to see with their own eyes the disasters 
to which militarism leads. It is to be hoped that this 
terrible experience will put them on their guard ; for mili- 
tarism, or imperialism, otherwise the spirit of domination, 
is a danger to all great nations, in all times and in all parts 
of the world. France, like many others, has had to pay 
dearly for the lesson, and even Great Britain herself is 
not without reproach. The Germans have at least ren- 
dered the world this service : the excessive amount of 
harm they have done has accentuated the danger. They 
have proved the case most thoroughly. Even assuming 
that they escape a disaster, they have already lost all hope 
of victory. They cannot derive the amount of profit 
from war that they might have expected from peace, as 
we shall presently see. 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 227 

The German war party has accomplished its purpose. 
What has it done ? The victories that elated it and swelled 
it with pride awakened a new need within it : something 
more than a need, a patriotic and religious duty, incumbent 
upon every good German, not to stop halfway, to aim 
ever and ever higher, and to Hft *' Germany above all" 
for the good of the world in general. It has stimulated 
and exalted public opinion for the purpose of leading it 
astray when the time came, and the government with it. 
It has long prepared public opinion for the cost of keeping 
up an army and navy commensurate with its ambition. 
It made this ambition take the preponderant place as a 
supreme law overriding all other human laws, even those 
of honor and of the simplest honesty. ''No laws and no 
limitations ; the greatest and vilest crimes, if committed 
in the service of Germany, become virtues." Such is a 
summary of the war party's doctrine. On these lines it 
planned war like a crime, with the determination to con- 
quer at any cost. One shudders to think of the general 
decUne that would have followed its victory had it been 
successful ! It has not ; but we must not shut our eyes 
to the fact that no state will ever be able to try the experi- 
ment again with so many chances in its favor. No state 
will ever have the training, discipline and power of dissim- 
ulation and organization necessary for such a stroke ! 
And yet, with all its chances, it will fail, and had to fail. 
Its plot will soon become revealed in its true light as 
gigantic and, at the same time, stupid. This will dis- 
courage those who might like to imitate it. Even those 
among them who disregard the moral aspect of the opera- 
tion must admit that it has been not only a bad action but 
bad business, which is not saying enough. 

In less than a year, the German military party will have 
squandered, for no result, and without reckoning the mil- 
lions of human lives and the thousands of milhons of dollars 



228 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

for which it is responsible, the inheritance of several cen- 
turies of reserve force accumulated by German labor and 
patriotism. It has bound the Emperor, the Empire and 
even the intellectuals to its chariot wheels ; it has become 
the expression of the Empire's will; it has staked Ger- 
many's fortune on a single card, and lost it. What a 
fortune, and what a future were Germany's ! She had 
become hardened by her struggle against difficulties, which 
had tempered and trained her. She had become a trium- 
phantly expansive force. All she had to do was to let her 
population go on multiplying and spreading abroad, so as 
to distance her less enterprising rivals and colonize with- 
out running any risks or assuming any responsibilities. 
Germany was colonizing other nations' colonies and even 
her neighbors' territories. So long as she was peaceful, 
time was on her side, strengthening the results already 
achieved and opening up countless new fields of activity 
and unhoped-for sources of wealth. This was a really 
respectable triumph, because Germany's progress stimu- 
lated her rivals' initiative and ingenuity and would have 
contributed eventually to universal progress. But this 
peaceful triumph would not do for the military party or 
for the German Empire ! An empire cannot endure rivals ; 
it must either be J&rst or nowhere ; it must either be above 
everything or not exist at all; and, rather than sacrifice 
its pride, the Empire has sacrificed Germany. It was an 
incalculable sacrifice, but we can nevertheless form a 
rough estimate of what it means. 

Before 1870, the struggle between the French and Ger- 
man Empires was at least intelligible ; but when the French 
Empire was vanquished, Germany's first duty was to take 
advantage of the lesson and not to make the mistakes 
which had proved its adversary's ruin. By atoning for 
the wrongs it has committed, it could easily have brought 
about a reconciliation with the French Republic. The 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 229 

German military party, however, was a still unsatisfied 
conqueror. Since 1875 it has alarmed and disturbed Eu- 
rope in all sorts of ways which there is a too great tendency 
to forget. It has driven the French Republic into the 
arms of autocratic Russia. Moreover, its excessive de- 
mands and its oppressive pohcy in the non- German prov- 
inces of the Empire, and its hostility to the general demand 
for emancipation, have stirred up antagonism and resist- 
ance and created a general state of distrust and dissatis- 
faction. 

As a consequence, the mere force of circumstances and 
the mere contrast between its regime and that of the Ger- 
man Empire have made France a natural center of attrac- 
tion for all nations whose anxiety was aroused by the 
prospect of German supremacy. Great Britain drew 
nearer to France, and the Entente Cordiale became the 
complement of the Russian alliance and an effective equiva- 
lent of the Triple Alliance. German militarism has recon- 
ciled, against itself, several hereditary enemies, France and 
Russia, France and England, England and Russia, Russia 
and Japan. Instead of viewing this association for public 
safety as a warning, the German Government could see 
nothing in it but a threat and a pretext for an unHmited 
increase in its means of action and its armaments. It 
made ceaseless preparations, not for justifiable resistance 
but, as events have proved, for striking a blow and waging 
a war of extermination, while France, Russia and England 
were obviously taken unawares. It has taken them six 
months to make up for lost time. If Germany had con- 
fined herself to defensive preparations, she would have 
been impregnable, as the events of the war have shown. 
The rapid progress of the principles of justice and inter- 
national concihation, which are constantly developing, 
would have rendered any Franco- German war unnecessary 
and impossible. 



230 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Without venturing to prophesy, do we not know enough 
aheady to see what will be the end of the German imperial 
scheme? We see Russia, bled in vain but still impene- 
trable, still stronger, richer and more populous, taking 
her revenge for the treaty of Berhn, preponderant, what- 
ever may happen, at Constantinople, mistress of the 
Dardanelles and installed on the Mediterranean, to the 
exclusion of Germany. 

We see Italy separated from Germany; we see Greece, 
Serbia, even Bulgaria and Roumania compelled sooner or 
later to side against the Turks, or, in other words, against 
Austria and against Germany. 

We see, at the same time, Austria sentenced, if not extin- 
guished, and Germany really hemmed in and forced even- 
tually into a duel which ought to have been avoided at any 
cost — a most unequal duel with Russia, a duel of two 
races and not merely of two armies. We see Russia, whose 
prodigious resources are not reaUzed by Americans, press- 
ing with the whole weight of her population and her infinite 
wealth on Germany. We see all the traditional hatred 
of the two races revived. We see Russia utilizing all that 
her young protegees in the Balkans have suffered from 
Turco-Germanic oppression to propagate the Slav idea 
among them, from the Adriatic to Belgrade and from 
Sofia to Prague : the Slav idea, which means hatred of 
Islam combined with that of German domination, justified 
by the horrors of the present war. 

We see Russia, essentially a colonizing power, Russia, 
who colonizes as a drop of oil spreads through in filtrations, 
now in possession of access to the open sea and using her 
ingenuity to make the produce of her agriculture and her 
growing industries take the place of German goods in all 
the world's markets. We see Germany's laborious under- 
takings all over the world, in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, 
brought into question. We see England, the United 



MILWAUKEE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 23 1 

States, Scandinavia, Holland, Italy, Japan and all new 
countries discounting the stoppage of German activity 
and hurrying to take its place, at any rate for a time, while 
Germany staggers under the crushing burden of her debt 
and tries to cope with internal difficulties which she has 
more reason than any other power to fear after the war is 
over. 

These economic, social and political difficulties will be 
great. We will not exaggerate them, for there can be no 
compressing the vitahty of a nation, and no one can seri- 
ously suppose that Germany, even if crushed, will give 
up all hope of reviving. Whatever happens, she will not 
fail to find, among her present customers even, support 
which will enable her to exist, to produce, sell and buy. 
Her vitahty will be a necessity from her enemies' point 
of view, if only to make sure of the payment of the war 
indemnities. Nobody will be simple enough to use Ger- 
many's own theory of the necessary destruction of the 
enemy against Germany herself. There is, nevertheless, 
one chastisement which she cannot escape, and to which 
I have not yet referred. It is this : 

Germany will remain soHd with the mihtary party she 
has so bhndly followed. She has not merely sacrificed 
the flower of the youth of our time, destroyed the treasures 
of civilization, museums, libraries, churches and cathedrals, 
and exceeded the horrors perpetrated by the Duke of Alba, 
her pretext being the necessity of terrorizing the people 
she wanted to conquer. She has done still worse than all 
this. She has broken her pledges and violated the most 
sacred rights. She has killed confidence. Her word will 
no longer be believed and her signature will not be accepted. 
No one will negotiate with her without having the most 
substantial guarantees, such as are required from bankrupts. 

Any other nation fallen from so high an estate would at 
least inspire pity; but no reasonable man can ask us to 



232 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

believe in Germany so long as she has not renounced the 
system that has done her so much harm. She alone can 
liberate herself and bring about her own salvation. So 
long as she voluntarily submits to the yoke placed on her 
neck by the military party, so long will she be generally 
detested. When she complains, every one will say: *'It 
serves you right ; you have only gotten what you deserve." 
Her only resource will be to begin her history all over again, 
with its struggles and perpetual system of terrorizing. She 
will watch for an opportunity, until dissensions show 
themselves again in Europe, for taking her revenge, which 
will be always possible but always ephemeral. She will 
keep alive the dread of another war which will be still more 
horrible than any of its predecessors. This threat will be 
her invariable resource, her policy and her monstrous 
specialty, and it will render her accursed, able to do nothing 
but harm without being in a position to profit by it, power- 
less and yet feared and all the more hated. And yet how 
easy it would have been for Germany, with her great 
quaHties and without her pride, to make herself loved ! 



CHAPTER XII 

THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 

I. Chicago. Latest developments. The lake traffic. The drain- 
age canal. The town. The American luncheon. The Panama 
Canal. American Sunday. The Orchestra Hall. — 2. Art, 
Music, Literature, Science, Philosophy. — 3. The American 
Barber. — 4. The Universities of Chicago and Illinois. 
Chicago. Urbana. The religion of the future. The Chinese revo- 
lution boycotted by European diplomacy. — 5. Women and the 
Drink Question. — 6. Cincinnati. The wealthy man who does 
good. The fine river. Toledo, Indiana, Columbus, Cleveland, 
Dayton. Organization of peace and aviation. — 7. End of the 
First Part of my Campaign. 

I. Chicago. Latest Developments 

In 1902 I gave some account of the astonishment created 
in my mind by my first visit to Chicago/ but nevertheless 
I have still a great deal to say about this immense city, 
where, this time, I found myself in familiar surroundings 
and among tried friends, with the result that my informa- 
tion was much better and more extensive. 

Chicago is only a few hours' journey from Milwaukee, 
which I left in the morning. I had scarcely finished 
reading the papers before the train began to slacken speed 
and run through a straggling collection of houses, indicating 
that the mighty city was at hand. Chicago has become 
one of the greatest railroad centers of the world. It is a 
terminus of thirty-four lines. There is no going through 

^ A series of private letters published in 1902 by the French local news- 
paper, Le Journal Flechois. 

233 



234 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Chicago; onehas to stop there. These thirty-four lines repre- 
sent a distance of 92,398 miles, or 42 per cent of the total 
railroad mileage of the United States. Every day 1594 
trains enter or leave Chicago, without counting the suburban 
traffic. The total length of all the railroads — including 
subways, overhead and ordinary lines — within the city 
is incredible, and then there are the automobiles, of which 
there seem to be more here than anywhere else. Chicago, 
which was a humble village of 60 inhabitants in 1823, had 
a population of 4470 in 1840, 1,698,000 in 1900, and 
2,185,000 in 1910. The city keeps up 1077 churches, 
65 public libraries, 6 colleges and universities, 267 public 
schools and nearly 70 parks and open spaces, large and 
small, including 14 model playgrounds and 3 lakeside 
beaches. Its newspapers and periodicals number 725, 
and its licensed saloons reach the modest total of only 
7152 — very few in comparison with Paris, London and 
Berlin. Paris, for instance, has 31,560, or 44,257, if we 
include the suburbs. 

Travelers always visit the celebrated works of the 
International Harvester Company, a ''combine" of two 
rival firms, McCormick and Deering, whose agricultural 
machinery is to be found on farms all over the world. 
One cannot, moreover, ignore the organ and piano fac- 
tories or those of the Pullman cars which I am using to 
an excessive extent. 

The increase of transport facilities of all kinds, and 
especially the cold-storage cars used all over the United 
States, has largely contributed to the prodigious develop- 
ment of the salted and canned meat industries at Chicago. 
The capital invested in them has increased from $8,400,000 
in 1880 to over $70,000,000. Some idea of this may be 
obtained by visiting the horrible stockyards, to which 
the railroads brought 14,050,000 head of cattle in 1909, 
to fall under the slaughter-man's knife or club. (But all 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 235 

this is well known.) The importance of the grain and 
flour trades is also very evident. Lumber is no longer 
brought to Chicago to be floated downstream to the in- 
terior ; the supply is dwindling away. On the other hand, 
an industry of which a great deal will be heard has been 
founded. The Steel Corporation did not hesitate to con- 
struct the largest blastfurnaces in the world near Chicago 
at a cost of $65,000,000. This is the latest development 
of modern progress. It keeps pace with that of the lake 
traffic which I am never tired of admiring, but which never- 
theless has not yet reached perfection. Chicago's steel, 
like its machinery, canned foods and Pullman cars, could 
be conveyed direct, in case of need, to any part of the 
world without transhipment. The steamers are loaded at 
the wharf side in the river or canal of Chicago at the 
foot of the docks, descend through the Lakes and then 
reach the ocean through the St. Lawrence River. The 
trip is long but satisfactory; but it has been given up 
in favor of the new order, for various reasons. The 
boats, having arrived at their destination in the Black 
Sea, for example, find no freight to take back ; they easily 
find it for New York but not for the Lakes. Furthermore 
the insurance companies favor New York, so that their 
tariffs for lake navigation are prohibitive. The force of 
affairs is, however, such that the number and tonnage of 
boats at Chicago does not stop increasing; in 1909 there 
were 12,385 arrivals and sailings, representing 15,521,257 
tons. Great maritime ports may envy these figures. 
That of Liverpool does not exceed 12,000,000, that of 
Havre does not reach 7,000,000. There are no less than 
17 navigation companies on the Great Lakes, representing 
all together a tonnage of 7,290,745. 

One of the most extraordinary and fortunate enterprises 
for Chicago is the opening of an artificial canal, the 
drainage canal, which reverses the order of nature, or 



236 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

reestablishes it, according as one goes back in the history 
of the American continent. It is known to-day that the 
waters of the Great Lakes flow toward the Atlantic through 
the Niagara River. Chicago has therefore been obliged 
to follow the gentle slope of the ground so as to drain all 
its waste water, and particularly the sewerage, into the 
lake ; but as the lake constituted the city water supply — 
a first-rate water corresponding very nearly to that of 
the Lake of Geneva and pumped up from a depth of seven 
or eight hundred feet for city use — the people of Chicago 
soon discovered that they were poisoning their own water 
supply, especially when the waste water was driven towards 
the center of the lake by a westerly wind. What was to 
be done? In so level a country, the slightest declivity 
of the ground would be of value, and the civil engineers 
and geologists hit upon the idea of utilizing a river bed 
dating from the ice age. This river bed sloped away 
from the lake instead of towards it, and communicated 
with a tributary of the Mississippi. A channel was dug 
with a slope that would easily carry off the contents of 
the sewers when the latter had been diverted from the 
lake. The sewerage is largely diluted with running water, 
purified by the open air and finally discharged into the 
Illinois. Joliet, one of the first riverside cities to ''benefit" 
by this unexpected tributary, is thus provided with two 
doubtful privileges : it gets all Chicago's dirty water and 
is the location of the state prison. Joliet no doubt filters 
its water after the latest and most approved systems. In 
any event, Chicago has made our pioneers' paradoxical 
idea come true : the Great Lakes now have two outlets 
in different directions, one towards the Atlantic and the 
other towards the Gulf of Mexico. 

Americans are justly proud of these great undertakings, 
which I discussed with sundry pleasant fellow travelers 
pending our arrival in Chicago. I have already remarked 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 237 

that, like mere European trains, those in America are 
Hable to be late. I was again met at the depot by my 
faithful friend, Cyrus McCormick, whose guest I was in 
1902. We were delighted to see each other again, and we 
were inquiring warmly about our famiUes and friends 
when we were surrounded by a ring of reporters and pho- 
tographers. I could neither see nor hear them, on account 
of the fog and noise. I had to open my eyes to their 
widest and strain my voice severely so as to supply them 
all with their ''copy" and pictures, or even caricatures. 
Finally, we drove off to the Blackstone Hotel, to which 
my friends had come on purpose to have me with them, 
their own house being closed. 

The Town 

Chicago has not greatly changed. I am more and 
more possessed with admiration for this mighty city which, 
after being flooded in 1855, raised the level of its soil eight 
feet, and after being reduced to ashes in 1871, was entirely 
rebuilt. The light, however, is very unfavorable. It is 
noon, but the lake is invisible, just as it was at Milwaukee, 
though it makes its presence felt, especially by the answer- 
ing howls from the whistles of the steamers, which we 
could easily imagine to be on the point of running into us. 
We make our way between two impetuous streams of 
traffic, — automobiles, wagons and motorcycles, — rushing 
and flowing and hooting and howling amidst the motor 
buses and tramways and under the elevated failroad. 
The combined effect is too much for me. Some of the 
crossings suggest visions of hell, the impression being 
strengthened by the flashes and strident squeaks from the 
trolley cars. And yet there are human beings who, in- 
stead of being mere visitors like myself, live here! This 
is one of the finest parts of the city, where all the best 



238 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and largest stores are. In all these ground-floor premises, 
twice or even ten times buried like cellars under the bulk 
of twenty stories or more, and under the elevated railroad 
viaducts that occupy the middle of the roadway, business 
men and workers of both sexes live, customers come to 
make their purchases, cashiers calculate, stenographers 
and typewriters transcribe hurriedly dictated letters and 
men and women think, plan and remember. I pity them. 
How can any human beings endure the sudden shocks of 
sound and the aggressive noisiness of all these vehicles 
fretting and fuming and flashing, stopping and starting 
again and coming and going in every direction and without 
a moment's interval, while, only a hundred yards away, 
the railroad runs in a cutting along the Michigan Boule- 
vard and the trains fill the air with smoke and steam and 
the clanging of bells, even more maddening than the steam- 
boat sirens? And how can I describe the scene when 
the swing bridges are opened to let the steamers through 
and the double tide of street traffic is stopped for a few 
minutes, after which it flows again with renewed intensity ? 
What one sees here is a constant distribution of produce 
to all parts of the world. I wonder how business men and 
their employees can endure conditions so hostile to intel- 
lectual work, reflection and imagination — all incalculably 
valuable producing factors. The more perfect a machine 
is, and the human machine is like all others in this respect, 
the more quietly it works. Much noise, little work has 
long been an accepted axiom with us. The Americans 
have proved its falsity, but they do not yet know the value 
of silence. 

My room at the hotel was quite a haven of rest from all 
the noise, but nevertheless I had to leave it very soon to 
attend a big luncheon that was waiting for me, and what a 
luncheon ! 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 239 

The American Luncheon 

The American luncheon, which is both quiet and sumptu- 
ous, is a national institution. Most of the great modern 
enterprises in the United States are decided upon or pre- 
pared for at one of these luncheons, or at a dinner of the 
same kind. Twenty or thirty of the leading citizens come 
together to meet the newcomer, question him and pass 
judgment on him. Every one eats and drinks without 
paying much attention to the menu, magnificent though 
it often is, or to the luxurious and refined character of the 
table-setting, flowers and attendance, all this being taken 
as in the ordinary course. The occasion is an important 
one, and, as every one knows, will lead to various decisions 
and acts affecting the future of the commerce and industry 
of the city and nation. It is an occasion that is worth 
preparing for. It is like one of the banquets of the ancients, 
in the most beautiful surroundings obtainable, held with 
a view to American action. After luncheon, people take 
their coffee, smoke at the table and talk to their neighbors. 
In this way the ice is broken. Then come the speeches, 
and whoever is not in harmony with the spirit of the oc- 
casion, or is not destined to agree with the rest, shows 
his own incompatibility, consciously or unconsciously. 
He drops out, of his own accord, without being asked to 
go. The password is given ; the city and nation are made 
acquainted with the views of the guests, and if these views 
are favorable, the most exclusive houses are thrown open 
to the visitor, whereby his task is materially lightened. 

Such was my impression of the luncheon given me by 
the Union League Club in 1902 and also of the present 
one, with this difference that, instead of coming for the 
first time, I returned. Some of my most distinguished 
friends were waiting for me. Some had traveled a very 
long way to meet me, notably Wilham Jennings Bryan, 



240 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

whom I had missed in Texas and at Lincoln, and who had 
been good enough to write me, nearly two months before, 
that he intended to come to Chicago on purpose to see me. 
Cyrus McCormick, our host, was the first speaker. He 
spoke feelingly of my first visit, and then Mr. Bryan de- 
livered one of his wittiest and most eloquent speeches. My 
reply was quite a hymn of gratitude. Skeptics may make 
fun of the use of such a phrase, but I wanted to say some- 
thing that was only too true. Every business man in 
Europe, in 1902, laughed at the idea of international justice 
and arbitration, and poHticians and the Press, of course, 
did likewise. Chicago was the first place in which I found 
a nucleus of broad-minded and positive men who realized 
that it is the mission of the two republics, France and the 
United States, to enlighten the world and lead it in the 
new path. It was soon after this visit that President 
Roosevelt — the first to forestall the expressions of con- 
fidence to which it gave rise — instituted himself a cham- 
pion of the Hague institution, and his example was followed 
by many other Americans. 

The manifestations of clear-sightedness and innovating 
independence of the American people are traditional in 
Chicago. It was there that Ferdinand de Lesseps found 
support to undertake his canal at Panama. The memory 
of the two lectures which he gave before the Chamber of 
Commerce and the engineers of the whole country at 
Chicago remains vivid. Although his lectures, defivered 
in French, had to be translated as he spoke, they were 
nevertheless received enthusiastically, and this enthusiasm 
contributed toward determining the general sympathies 
of American opinion. Malevolence and envy have ex- 
ploited our weakness, here as elsewhere. In the enter- 
prise of De Lesseps, as in the magnificent French foundation 
of Louisiana and Canada, some have sought to see gross 
failings, the results of French instability. Such base mis^ 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 24 1 

representation, however, does not prevent truth and 
justice from prevailing ultimately, and it was at Chicago 
again that I heard De Lesseps's reputation restored to its 
proper level in these words: ''It does not matter whether 
the Panama Canal is given De Lesseps's name or not ; 
neither need we inquire who will reap the greatest amount 
of profit from it; the fact remains that France conceived 
the idea and compelled the world to carry it out." 

In the evening, a great banquet was held in the Gold 
Room of the Congress Hotel. It was another of those cor- 
dial and splendid gatherings at which the speeches and con- 
versation stimulate one's enthusiasm and revive the flow 
of activities. 

American Sunday 

The following day being Sunday, a day of rest even in 
Chicago, I took the opportunity of bringing my corre- 
spondence and notes up to date. The latter were merely 
hasty jottings instead of the rapid drawings or water- 
colors I was so fond of making when I was young, but 
which I am afraid will never be accomplished now, except 
in my dreams. I had no time. Fortunately for me, the 
friends who acted as guardian angels throughout my 
wanderings saved me all trouble and anxiety about all 
the arrangements for my journey. My railway tickets 
were taken and quarters found for me, and no inroads were 
made upon the little time I had to myself. Otherwise, 
in spite of the devoted labor of the secretary who has 
accompanied me for years on my journeys from Paris, I 
should never be able to send the necessary letters of thanks 
to people I have seen, announce my arrival to those I am 
to see and make proper arrangements for the details of 
my various visits, which are quite as interdependent as 
the links of a chain. Neither can I shut my door al- 
together to newspaper men or to bona fide visitors who 



242 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

come in search of the truth and may prove useful in spread- 
ing it. 

Thus passes the morning, too quickly to my mind, in 
comparative soHtude, and so also passes the day. I go 
out alone, on foot. A calm has come over the city, and 
the sky has cleared. I walk beside the lake, cross bridges 
and canals and reach the park ; in short, I wander idly 
about, enjoying the return of peace and light. I walk 
along streets, some narrow and some wide, void of the 
midday throng. I see the names of La Salle and other 
French pioneers respectfully and lovingly commemorated. 
Yesterday — I had nearly forgotten this touching incident 
— a bridge was opened in front of me to let a steamer 
through. It was the Pere Marquette, and I gazed on it, 
full of veneration for the memory of the man whose name 
our ingratitude in France has forgotten. I went to call 
on Mrs. Potter Palmer (who proved to be away) to revive 
my recollection of the reception she gave me ten years 
ago at her house — a museum, or rather a temple she has 
dedicated to the glory of Millet, Corot and the whole 
French school, especially Claude Monet. 

The Orchestra Hall 

I came back tired but with my mental tension relaxed, 
ready for the ceremony or service or festival — the name 
is of little consequence — at which I was to speak in the 
evening. I need not say that the people of Chicago have 
a concert and lecture hall worthy of them, — the Orchestral 
Hall, an immense building with comfortable seating ac- 
commodation for an audience of three or four thousand. 
I spent some time listening to the organ and the voices 
of the choir and of the entire audience, blended in a chant 
that was both secular and religious. It was an appeal for 
inspiration and for universal harmony ; it rose above the 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 243 

cares of the world and suggested preparation for an in- 
sight into higher things. I was still in rapt attention 
when my turn came to speak. My address was largely 
inspired by the attitude of my hearers themselves. I 
was conscious of mutual confidence, and felt that in con- 
veying my own thoughts I was expressing theirs. It 
seemed to me, not for the first time, that my audience felt 
exactly the same as all the other audiences I have addressed, 
and from whom I have derived instruction, in my own 
country and in all other countries. 

There is a beHef that men are unlike one another because 
they happen to live in different countries, or on opposite 
banks of the same river or sea or ocean. It is a great 
mistake. 

All the audiences I have addressed for the past twenty 
years might be regarded as parts of one great whole — an 
audience of human beings who rejoice over the same hopes, 
abhor the same evils, cherish the same ideals and welcome 
the same signs of progress. 

I have looked at them all with an unprejudiced eye — 
men, women and children seemingly so different, from the 
north, south, east and west ; in France, England and Ger- 
many, Russia, Hungary and the East, Scandinavia, Texas, 
Cahfornia and Chicago — and I can say this to their gov- 
ernments: ^'You don't know how near they are to an 
understanding or how greatly they want it. They will 
have it some day without your assistance if you fail to 
understand them, and they will have it in spite of you or 
against your opposition." 

I expressed all this, and my hearers and I, for a moment, 
felt that we were at one in a sentiment of human brother- 
hood. 

It was a memorable and a happy evening. What a 
fortunate community, to be still young enough to want 
such refreshing gatherings, where all can close up their 



244 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

ranks against the chances and changes of life, just as sheep 
on mountain pastures chng together to meet the storm ! 

As to these weekly meetings, which are organized 
by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, their object 
is to uphold what is called in America the Christian 
spirit, which is entirely different from the clerical spirit, 
and the spirit of comradeship among the business men, 
workmen, clerks and the rest of Chicago's working popu- 
lation which springs from so many different foreign origins, 
and in which any man without companionship is lost. 
These meetings supply a need that always has been and 
always will be felt ; they are one of the conditions of civili- 
zation ; they take the place, in many cases, of instruction, 
or add to it. In such surroundings I should have Hked to 
Hsten to a classical concert. The enthusiasm shown by 
the American audience would have enabled me to estimate 
the progress made towards a higher educational standard. 

2. Art, Music, Literature, Science, Philosophy 

The Americans do not have music in their blood as, for 
instance, the Russians do, but they have a taste for it, 
they respect it and they realize its social value. European 
skeptics make fun of the instinctive enthusiasm of Ameri- 
cans, who not only buy up ancient and modern works of 
art all over the world, but make collections of the artists 
themselves, not to mention celebrities of all kinds. There 
is not a single famous actor, actress, tenor, baritone, 
soprano, professor, literary man, painter, architect, sculp- 
tor, writer, poet, savant, engineer, orator, doctor, surgeon, 
aviator or runner who has not been asked to make himself 
or herself known to the American public. Some people 
see nothing but '^ snobisme," or slavish imitation, in all 
this. In any case, it is a very intelligent form of " snob- 
isme," and I would rather call it competition of a high and 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 245 

useful kind. What would be said if the Americans pro- 
fessed to be able to do everything for themselves and 
thought their local celebrities good enough for them? 
They have avoided such a mistake. They have gone to 
the world's school, and yet people laugh at them ! Such 
criticism, which luckily has no effect, will not interfere 
with the normal course of international development. 
It is natural that works of art should be subject, hke every- 
thing else, to the ordinary laws of supply and demand and 
should emigrate to those countries in which they are most 
appreciated, and it is natural that artists should go the 
same way. So much the worse for the pubHc that cannot 
give them a home in their own country and wants to keep 
them without paying for them ! The immigration of 
masterpieces and intellectual producers in America is the 
logical outcome of American activity. By importing the 
best pictures, the finest works of art and the foremost 
artists in the world, the Americans lay the foundations 
of their higher education. From private museums and 
collections this education spreads to the masses by means 
of the magazines, picture postal cards and other kinds of 
reproduction, and the same process goes on, to an even 
greater extent, with the immigration of music and musi- 
cians. The Americans need music. It provides them 
with an interpreter and a connecting link at the same time. 
It establishes an invisible bond between all who listen to 
it, and gives them something that acts as a complement 
to ordinary language and expresses what they cannot 
convey in words. This new, ideal, international language 
raises people's minds above the petty squabbles of every- 
day life and recruits them, so to speak, as members of a 
tacitly recognized association for good and for peace. 
There comes a day when grace visits even the scoffers, 
and they find themselves influenced by hitherto unfamiHar 
ideas and sentiments and led into a new path. In this 



246 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

way a revulsion of feeling is fairly rapidly brought about 
in all civilized countries. It is a revulsion that will deepen 
the chasm already existing between the generations of 
yesterday and those of to-morrow — between the peoples 
of the past who lived in isolation and rivalry, knowing 
nothing of one another, and the peoples of the future, who 
will be constantly in contact and cooperation. 

Musical education in France began to make headway 
among the public, as did other forms of progress, some 
forty years ago, shortly after our disastrous war ; and we, 
like other countries, have exported music and musicians. 
The Americans have become eager clients of ours. This 
does not mean that their tastes are exclusive. Most of 
them began by having German masters. They have 
organized symphony orchestras all over the country, not 
only in the East and at Chicago, but at St. Louis, St. Paul, 
Kansas and Denver. Cincinnati was trying, in 191 1, to 
establish popular concerts. Chicago has its musical 
society, the Mendelssohn Club, and its college of music. 
St. Paul has its Schubert Club, whose classical concerts 
are given at the First Baptist Church. I have already 
referred to the magnificent organ built at Salt Lake for the 
Mormons, and at the Tabernacle I could have heard a 
choir of 175 picked singers, similar to the Chicago male 
choir. At Milwaukee not only lectures but concerts take 
place in the church or the Pabst Theater. There are two 
well-known musical societies, the Oratorio and the Women's 
Musical Club, at Columbus. The Apollo Club gives 
concerts, which I should have liked to attend, at Denver. 
The celebrated Boston opera troupe has a season at Los 
Angeles. Debussy's ^'Prodigal Son" was being played 
at Minneapolis when I was there. French opera is now 
given all over America. San Francisco has had ''La 
Navarraise," ''Herodiade," ''Thais," "Samson and Deli- 
lah," "Carmen" and "Lakme." At other places, "The 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 247 

Bell-Ringer of Notre Dame" and older operas, such as 
*'Mignon" or even "La Juive," are given, and it is quite 
usual to see the names of Massenet, Saint-Saens, Delibes 
and Bizet on the theater posters. 

It would be a mistake to believe that only the upper 
classes appreciate music. On the contrary, it is penetrating 
everywhere and making up for lost time. The people love 
it. In proof of this, let me cite an instance taken, not from 
New York or Boston, but from the Far West. At San 
Francisco, as in the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world, Christmas 
is the great popular festival of the year — a great human 
outburst of hope and joy. How did the people of San 
Francisco celebrate it at the end of the year 191 1, and 
how do they propose to celebrate it, weather permitting, 
in future years? By a really popular concert, held in a 
public square. A hundred thousand hsteners were packed 
together, under the half Hght of a mild evening, in the 
open space formed by the intersection of four main streets. 
Most of the people were standing ; the others were at the 
lighted windows of the buildings and skyscrapers over- 
looking the square. They were like swarms of bees in 
the cells of an enormous hive, or simply Hke spectators in 
the galleries of a fifteen-story theater. The performers 
were on an immense platform facing Market Street. They 
consisted of an orchestra, a French grand opera troupe, 
and various choirs, such as those of the Opera, Columbia 
Park, Mountain Ash, the Cathedral Mission, etc. For- 
tunately it was a beautifully fine evening. The moon 
was at the full, and the stars also joined in the festival. 
The concert began at seven o'clock and was carried out 
amid complete and reverential silence. It was as if a 
whole people had assembled to pay homage to the majesty 
of the night ! Not a word or an exclamation could be 
heard while any one of the selections was being given, but 
when the music ceased, there was loud and prolonged ap- 



248 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

plause. They heard the chorus from 'Xavalleria Rus- 
ticana," the Hallelujah Chorus by Handel, ''Hosannah," 
the valse from "Romeo and Juliet" by Gounod, '^Noel" 
and Gounod's ''Bells." When Kubelik came forward 
with his vioHn, the deafening applause stopped as if by 
magic. Like the orchestra, the whole assembly was swayed 
by his bow. 

Play Again I 

A httle boy, perched on the top of Lotta's fountain, 
was heard to exclaim: ''Play again!" He had never 
heard anything Hke it before. That night must have been 
a revelation to thousands of miserable creatures. 

The finest effect of all was at the end, when the crowd, 
following the lead of the singers and orchestra, took up 
the "Adeste Fideles" with one voice. Without knowing 
it, they gave simultaneous expression to sentiments which 
are supposed to be different but in reality are identical — 
respect for art and Nature, faith in humanity, love and 
good will. 

Why do we never see such spectacles in Europe even on 
fine summer days or evenings? Why is such a festival so 
American? Because it is an impossibility unless some of 
the more favored members of the community are willing 
to take it in hand and organize it. In other countries, 
people of this class have become skeptics. The Americans 
are not biases; their ambition and curiosity have no 
limits. Are they not trying to find out whether the primi- 
tive sounds of Indian and negro music cannot be preserved 
for the benefit of posterity by means of the phonograph ? 
I have known lectures to be given, with very fine dissolving 
views, for the purpose of making the American of to-day 
acquainted with the North American Indian. One of 
these days the Indians of the West and South, the Iroquois, 
Hurons, Sioux, Comanches and Apaches will have their 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 249 

turn. With the views are given Indian war songs and 
the well-known war whoops. These are a suitable accom- 
paniment to the tortures and scalp dances, which strike 
me as typical of war and its unfruitfulness. War, as is its 
wont, has destroyed everything among the Indians, even 
down to their love songs and lullabies. Musicians, lec- 
turers, learned men and folklore experts are combining 
to make these lectures as attractive as possible. Efforts 
are being made to ascertain what traces are left of the old 
French songs sung by our pioneers and the hymns that our 
missionaries tried to teach the savages, just as traces of 
African or Spanish influences can be found in negro melo- 
dies and dances. To put the matter in a nutshell, there 
is the awakening of music, as of everything else, in the 
United States. 

A Few Words on American Literature, Science and 

Philosophy 

Perhaps I ought to stop now for a moment and say at 
least a few words of American Hterature, science and 
philosophy. It would be easy to summarize what has been 
written and said about it. There is indeed a great and 
admirable effort to transfer from Europe to the United 
States the center of the world erudition ; but I deliberately 
refuse to extend my task. I am not willing to assume 
superficially the work which has been done and will be 
done excellently by so many others. I leave this immense 
subject to the respected European writers who have given 
or give their lives to it. A few words would be worse than 
nothing. The American writer is interested in anything 
that is life, — scientific, social, economic, material and moral 
progress, actual politics or history; he uses the latest 
refinements or discoveries to ascertain facts and illustrate 
his observations ; he tries, at any price, to reach the atten- 



250 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

tion of his readers, all more or less very busy, but still 
disposed to learn and to read and to propagate good books. 
Excellent books of education are daily published in all the 
great centers of the United States. Books are respected 
as guides. American printing and binding can too easily 
compete with our actual French ways. I read almost 
every day, in the newspapers, magazines or reviews, ex- 
cellent articles, which are not generally elaborated with so 
much care as ours, but are deep, interesting and genuine. 
But I must pursue my journey. 

3. The American Barber 

I was invited by the French residents at Chicago to 
attend the annual banquet of their Friendly Society at the 
La Salle Hotel. It was held just after my lecture, but, 
though I was very tired, I did not fail to go. It unfor- 
tunately reminded me that Frenchmen, despite their great 
individual merit, often make themselves quite as conspic- 
uous by their quarrels as by the good they are capable of 
accomplishing. 

Next morning I paid a visit to the AlHance Frangaise. 
It pleased me so much that I followed it up, in the after- 
noon, by another lecture, in French this time, for the benefit 
of Chicago's French-speaking ladies, whose minds, imagina- 
tions, tastes and even eyes are turned towards France as 
to a magnetic pole. I must refrain, however, from de- 
scription, so as to leave myself space to refer to a very 
interesting experience which I had previously had in the 
palatial barber shop in the basement of the Blackstone 
Hotel. It was magnificent in white marble, gilding and 
electric hght, and had modern art decoration of the most 
refined description. This kind of shop is in reahty a palace 
where silent operators, in white overalls Hke a surgeon's, 
take possession of the customers deposited at their door 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 25 1 

by the elevator. I have always shaved myself, and I have 
been incHned to consider the man who puts himself under 
another's razor as not amounting to much ; but I do not 
cut my own hair, and I used my deficiency in this respect 
as a means of getting into touch with the American Figaro. 
The barber in the United States has widened the scope of 
his business to a remarkable extent, and he performs the 
same services all over the country, whatever may be his 
nationahty or his color, the only difference being in his 
outfit. In some places he has quite a parlor, and in others 
he operates almost in pubhc. I attracted attention at 
San Antonio, in Texas, by the persistence with which I 
stared for at least half an hour at the wide-open fronts 
of two or three barber shops. 

The patients take up Roman or Oriental attitudes and 
lie perfectly inert, like so many corpses in the hands of a 
bathing attendant; but, first of all, they have to hoist 
themselves on to long chairs with all sorts of mechanical 
devices, much more compKcated than those of a dentist's 
chair. They He stretched out with their eyes shut, look- 
ing like dead men, and the barber reigns supreme over 
them. The shaving is only a beginning. Every muscle 
of the head gets its share of massage, and then electricity 
is brought into play. Forehead, cheeks, nose, mouth and 
chin all respond to the frenzied appeals of a roller, manip- 
ulated by the operator very much as a gardener waters 
his flowers with a jet. Then the head has to be rubbed 
and dried and bandaged, and next the hands and nails 
are manicured by very smart-looking girls. All this is 
done in full view of passers-by and is very amusing for 
strangers. I should probably be at San Antonio now if 
the looks the operators gave me had not made me ashamed 
of my curiosity. 

Every barber at Chicago is a gentleman, and every 
manicurist is a young lady. The one at the Blackstone 



252 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Hotel was quite remarkable. While I was lying almost 
at full length and being operated upon, I kept one eye 
open so as to watch her. She was fair, refined and dis- 
tinguished in appearance. She looked like the typical 
typewriter girl who ends by making a rich marriage. 
She was quite absorbed in her duties. She sat beside a 
chair on which a young man of about thirty was recHning. 
Between her two white palms she held a hand he had 
abandoned to her ministrations. She opened and closed 
it, manipulated it and might almost be said to have made a 
plaything of it, but, as a matter of fact, she was not doing 
it for amusement, and was working on the hand just as 
if she were modeling in wax. And what was the young 
man doing or saying while this angelic being leaned over 
him with his hand in hers? He was calmly holding his 
newspaper in the other hand and reading steadily. 

Here is something we shall never see in France, I thought. 
In America it is perfectly natural, and it explains a great 
many things. Sensuality is reduced to its minimum in the 
United States. It is put on one side, and at first no one 
has time to think about it; later on, its danger in a new 
country is realized. The joint education of the sexes 
has thus become possible. Girls can do anything, and they 
finally exteriorize themselves and satisfy part of their 
natural instincts by devoting themselves to various forms 
of work, social activity or physical exercise, and by de- 
grees the calls of Nature become less frequent and less 
imperative. I do not know whether this can be described 
as happiness or as virtue, but it is a fact, and this fact 
plays a very important part in the life of the United States. 

4. The Universities of Chicago and Illinois. Chicago 

Much to my regret, the necessity of condensing prevents 
me from describing the luncheon given by Dr. Judson, 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 253 

president of the university, at which I met the pick of 
the professors, or the conversations that followed it and 
lasted until the time came for my address. The Univer- 
sity of Chicago, endowed by Mr. Rockefeller with truly 
royal Hberality, is undergoing a process of continual and 
unlimited extension. It is located a long way from the 
city and has the advantage of pure air and of verdure, which 
has been preserved as far as possible and scientifically 
added to. Every one of the university buildings has been 
provided by private generosity. '^ Money given away 
here" might be the motto of every American city. Most 
of these buildings are copies — not always faithfully or 
correctly made — of old university buildings in England, 
and are more or less distantly related to Magdalen College, 
the refectory of Christ Church, Oxford, and the chapel of 
King's College, Cambridge. All the laboratories, as well 
as the dormitories for girl and young men students, are 
built around a big "campus" and help to make up quite 
a city, with boulevards turfed and planted and beflowered 
on the latest principles, and with fine open promenades on 
which stand the palatial buildings lavished on education 
by a grateful municipality. This university covers the 
whole range of education, from the kindergarten, the 
primary school and the high school up to the graduates' 
college, that is to say, from the tenderest age up to the 
doctor's degree. The students are by no means drawn 
exclusively from Chicago, but also from distant places in 
the north and south of the United States, from Texas and 
Canada. The university is one of those points of fusion 
that meet the general need for intercourse and common 
action which I have observed everywhere. This is not one 
of those aristocratic universities, like Harvard or Prince- 
ton, where son follows father, so to speak. It is a demo- 
cratic university, not dependent on the state. It is a place 
for mutual rather than traditional education. There are 



254 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

a great many poor girl students, who manage to pay their 
fees by earning their Hving. It is preeminently a field for 
the joint education of the sexes. I cannot say it is a tri- 
umph for this system, for I have heard some of the pro- 
fessors object to it as being better suited to education 
than to mstruction. The French professors, for instance, 
who were formed by such masters as Gaston Paris and 
Langon, complain that they cannot teach the two sexes 
satisfactorily, at the same time. ''Rabelais'' or ''Don 
Quixote" interests some, but not all, and a tragedy by 
Corneille, such as "Horace," appeals more to the girls than 
to the young men. 

JJrhana 

I left the University of Chicago, meditating on the 
progress accomplished since the first lecture I delivered 
there, at the request of the late President Harper in 1902. 
Next day, I completed my visit by starting off by the 9.40 
train to spend the day at the state university in the little 
town of Urbana. 

Toward one o'clock in the afternoon I reached the sta- 
tion that serves the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. 
As usual, I was met at the station by the organizers 
of my lectures, and very little time was available dur- 
ing the day for a motor drive, but it nevertheless enabled 
me to enjoy another change of climate. I have encoun- 
tered almost every kind during my three months' travel- 
ing in various latitudes. When I left New York and 
Washington, the trees were bare. They were green at 
New Orleans and in blossom in San Francisco, asleep 
under the northern snows of Colorado, undecided at Kansas 
City, opening out at St. Louis, and still somnolent at St. 
Paul and Chicago, but here at Urbana is spring again — 
cold, but dressed in tender green. It is not only a change 
of climate, but of atmosphere. I have passed suddenly 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 255 

from the ample and intense vitality of a great manufactur- 
ing city, Chicago, to the quiet, the simple life. ^ Americans 
are quite accustomed to these contrasts and, in fact, live 
by them. Urbana is to Chicago what Boulder is to Denver 
and what Berkeley is to San Francisco. There is a general 
uprising of new and very varied centers of activity, each 
supplying something that the others lack. 

As was the case at Madison, I was entertained at lunch- 
eon at the University Club by the professors, and I was 
immediately convinced of the cordial spirit in which the 
day's arrangements had been made. My lecture was 
given in the afternoon at the Auditorium, and I found the 
great hall packed with attentive girls and young men. ^ The 
students' band opened the proceedings with the ''Mar- 
seillaise" and closed them with the ''Star-spangled Banner.'' 
At first, as usual, my audience showed nothing more than 
pohte curiosity, as if they had come quite as much to see 
the foreign lecturer as to hear him. Their expressions, 
however, soon began to show an awakening of interest, 
and I could see that what I said was being followed. They 
were with me as the course of my address changed from 
left to right and from right to left, went up or down or 
stopped. Their expression altered from uncertainty to 
a clear understanding, developing into bright intelligence. 
I was strongly reminded of a remark made by Phillips 
Brooks after he had given the young people of Boston one 
of those homely addresses which exercised their influence 
quite as much after his death as during his Hfetime : "This 
is something that will spoil you and turn you away from 
every other duty." 

After my address I felt the need of fresh air and exercise 
to work off my excitement. Several young professors 
accompanied me, and thanked me for what I had said. 
They abstained from commonplace remarks, and summed 
up what they considered to be the results of the meeting. 



256 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

They laid special stress on the value of experimental teach- 
ing to them in these complex and little-known questions, 
not only from the practical point of view, but as a source 
of inspiration. They all saw the value of a good foreign 
policy in the shape of a permanent policy of conciliation. 
One of them remarked: "You have crystallized opinion 
and are helping to create a definite demand, which has 
hitherto been merely subconscious, for international 
justice. It is a good action." After a long walk, I was 
left with only one companion, who remarked in the most 
natural way : "You are nearer to God than a great many 
ministers are." 

The Religion of the Future 

This remark explains what religion is, or ought to be, 
in the eyes of a great many Americans. Any man who 
renders service to his kind in word or deed is virtually a 
minister, not of any church, but of the Christian rehgion. 
This American religion, to which I propose to revert, is 
incomprehensible in Europe. It may be said to have had 
no existence in the past. It concerns itself with the pres- 
ent and especially with the future — the future of human- 
ity. It is practical, like all forms of American action. It 
exalts everything that strengthens courage, confidence, 
self-sacrifice and initiative. It has its saints, who have no 
connection with those in the calendar and are simply men 
who were useful to their fellows. Washington, Jefferson, 
Franklin, Madison, Lafayette, Pasteur, Victor Hugo, 
Beethoven, Columbus and Livingstone are saints. 

The Cosmopolitan Club 

At Urbana, as elsewhere, I was of course invited to pay 
a visit to the CosmopoHtan Club, where young students 
from every country under the sun, from America, Europe, 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 257 

Africa and Asia, meet under the same roof and form a 
symbol of the possible union of humanity. It is impossible 
to avoid the conclusion that the American universities 
constitute, in a still greater degree than those of other free 
countries, nothing less than centers of revolution, in regard 
to countries under absolute monarchies. I have already 
mentioned the growing objection of the American mentality 
to the German system of managing people by military 
methods, but these objections are very mild in compari- 
son with the ideas spread by Russian and Polish students 
throughout the country, against absolutism. One need 
only look through the pages of the Cosmopolitan, the hand- 
some illustrated volumes in which the work of the con- 
gresses or conventions of the International Association of 
''Cosmopolitan Clubs" is recorded, or the review called 
the Cosmopolitan Student, published by the association at 
Madison under the motto : ''Above all nations, humanity.*^ 
Every speech made by a Slav student may be summed up 
in these words : "The student is the victim — the Govern- 
ment is the Executioner." The 1909 volume contains 
the text of a speech on the part played by the Russian stu- 
dent in the struggle for liberty. This part consists in 
getting killed, and is thus defined by Mrs. Anna Walling : 
"The Russian student's traditional duty is, as it has 
always been, to go to prison, to Siberia, or to penal servi- 
tude for the good of the people, and the traditional duty 
of the universities still is to keep up the supply of revolu- 
tionary conspirators." "This is why Siberia now contains 
more educated inhabitants than any other part of the em- 
pire, whereas it used to be the most illiterate.'' Here again 
there is no distinction between the sexes. The list of exiles 
to Siberia, referred to in the speech in question, contains the 
names of women as well as men. It is another connecting 
link between Russian and American university students; 
between the American woman and the Russian woman. 



258 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The Chinese Revolution 

No government can do anything against this movement, 
which is neither vague nor reckless, but is, on the contrary, 
well thought out. The leading article in the Cosmo- 
politan Student for March, 1910, is written by the presi- 
dent of the association, a Chinese student, C. C. Wang. 
It suggests a small but definite plan of action. 'Xet us 
begin," he says, ''by strengthening our various chapters or 
clubs, and then let us get into touch with similar organ- 
izations in Europe and extend our international influence, 
but the first thing is to strengthen our chapters, and this 
depends on the action of a small number of energetic men^ 
It does not require much intelligence to see a connection 
between this movement in the United States and the Chinese 
revolution, and the rest. 

Europe does not worry about China, and yet that coun- 
try will be a real source of danger if we persist in our mis- 
taken ideas; the remedy is to see things as they are. 
This is a belief I have constantly asserted, and my 
journey through the United States has strengthened it. 
At Urbana, for instance, I saw young Chinese who aroused 
in my mind feelings which many Europeans do not believe 
they could entertain at all and which surprised even my- 
self — feelings of strong liking, confidence and admira- 
tion. Many of these young Chinese are models of intel- 
ligence, good behavior, tact and decision. Healthy living, 
on American lines, has developed their bodies, broadened 
their chests and given them an expression of self-confidence 
unmingled with hardness. They come of a stock familiar 
for many generations with a high standard of moral 
education which in itself is sufficient to command respect 
and facilitates social intercourse, union and friendship be- 
tween them and other foreigners of the same moral worth 
as themselves. The American religion is quite wide and 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 259 

tolerant enough to admit these Chinese, and consequently 
they derive great benefit from their studies, their literary and 
scientific education and their manner of life in the United 
States. All this provides them with a complete initiation, the 
consequences of which ought to give us much ground for re- 
flection. A new variety of the human race, with great qual- 
ities and incalculable numbers, is beginning to bestir itself 
after a prolonged sleep, and its future is beyond estimate. 
I tried in vain, more than twenty years ago, to arouse 
my own country to what I called the coming peril, the 
awakening of new countries, and their advantages, in the 
war of competition against rival military powers. My 
warnings were treated as nothing but imaginary fears, 
whereas the real purport of my advice was: ''Stop fight- 
ing among yourselves and join in attending to your common 
interests and your duties in regard to these new countries. 
Stop sowing injustice, oppression and hatred in China, or 
you will reap revolt and chastisement." I had my trouble 
for nothing, but the emancipation of China has begun. 
Hundreds of young Chinese are being educated and brought 
up as American citizens throughout the territory of the 
United States, and others in France, England and even 
Germany. They return home and mold generations of 
teachers. They meet with numerous obstacles, but these 
merely inflame their eagerness to serve their country. 
They want railroads, regular and rapid means of com- 
munication with the rest of the world, and the proper 
organization of the army and navy. They want modern 
administration and instruction, beginning with an alphabet. 
Opposition to their reform ideas makes them revolutionaries. 
Dr. Sun Wun, known as Sun Yat-sen, who was the tempo- 
rary president of the new Chinese Republic, was one of these 
American students. He and his writings were laid under 
a ban, but it was impossible to exclude his mental influence, 
which is shared by thousands of other Chinese of the best 



26o AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

class. One of his disciples, Vi-Kynin W. Koo, has been 
summoned from Columbia University, where for eight 
years he was one of the most distinguished students, to 
Peking, to fill the post of secretary to President Yuan 
Shih-k'ai. What has taken place in China is practically 
what happened in Turkey. The fermentation of an in- 
evitable revolution began on foreign soil and then spread 
to its own country. It is in the normal course of things 
that revolution should begin by rioting, but it is none the 
less revolution, hatched by Europe and America. It is 
true that this revolution has been and is more and more 
despised and boycotted, like all liberal efforts of our time, 
like the Turkish revolution, by the European diplomacy; 
it is a shame to see that the great powers, unable to unite 
for the service of a new, coming nation, which could become 
at least for them a good customer, can agree only in their 
common hostility against its emancipation. They cannot 
believe in its future, not seeing that this future is insepar- 
able from theirs ; they laugh, even in France, at an Eastern 
nation frankly anxious to take inspiration from the prin- 
ciples of our French revolution ; they think only of per- 
suading the young statesmen of that nation to buy as many 
of the biggest and costliest dreadnoughts as possible. Our 
grandchildren will be more than disgusted with the ob- 
stacles deliberately opposed by the so-called civilized powers 
to the development of civilization. Still, all these voluntary 
obstacles of ignorance and routine will not stop the course of 
progress. It may be that the European governments can 
understand their duty to China no more than their interest, 
but public opinion will not remain blind forever. 

The Boycotting of Revolution by European Diplomacy 

We ought, all of us, to lose no time in estabhshing mu- 
tually acceptable relations with the Far East. Do not let 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 26 1 

US wait until this policy of mutual respect is forced upon 
us and we have to accept it as a humihating answer to 
our own poUcy of former times. Do not let us force China 
to become a miUtary power as we tried to do with so many 
other newcomers, — Brazil, Argentine, Canada, etc. She 
is peaceable but not spiritless. Her young men, including 
those in our military schools, are much more convinced of 
the usefulness of learning to build roads, canals, railroads 
and schools than forts when they return home, but they 
are also learning how a free man gives his life to maintain 
his country's freedom. The days when the Western powers 
could quarrel beforehand about the partition of China have 
gone by. The question now is, how to go on Hving with 
China on mutually satisfactory terms of continuous peace. 
The young Chinese I am constantly meeting are so many 
living arguments in support of my conviction. They are 
already first-rate citizens, and they are not exceptional 
cases. Following the example of those who have gone 
before them, they will constitute themselves the leaders, 
hitherto wanting, of a mass of over four hundred milHon 
inhabitants. They are strong, industrious, sober and 
scrupulously honest, and when they become the educa- 
tional factors in a reorganized, enlightened, well-equipped 
and free country, they will carry weight in the world's 
councils and markets, to say nothing of battle fields. 

In adding that young Indians, Filipinos and Malagasys 
are going through the same process of emancipatory edu- 
cation in the United States, I certainly do not mean to 
imply that, notwithstanding the desperate struggle of 
European diplomacy, we are drawing near to a universal 
republic, but it is clear that new ways are gaining ground 
and that new scruples will force themselves upon govern- 
ments. They will have to limit their ambition and regu- 
late their action. Every one of them will have to submit 
to a system of voluntary discipline. This discipline has 



262 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

come into being together with the exercise of liberty and is 
taking shape in the United States. I see proof of this in 
the triumph of athletic sports, the progress of independent 
education and especially in the joint education of the 
sexes, of which Urbana provides an instance even more 
astonishing than all the others. 

5. Women and the Drink Question 

I wound up my day by a university dinner, to which 
the leading professors of the state and its environs had been 
invited. It was much more like a communion of ideas 
than a banquet. The toasts were settled beforehand, each 
being allotted to a speaker and printed on the menu. Be- 
fore the speeches began, I could not refrain from express- 
ing my surprise at seeing that, as was the case at the 
luncheon, nothing but ice water was drunk. This remark, 
which I had frequently made elsewhere, greatly amused 
the guests, and I was told that I was in a "dry territory," 
which meant that all distilled and fermented drinks are 
forbidden at Urbana. 

"Forbidden ? " I asked. "How ? By consent or by law ? '^ 

"Bylaw." 

This required explanation. It was that the sale or offer 
of wine, beer or spirits is illegal in Urbana and Champaign, 
and not a drop of them is to be had. The restriction is 
absolute, and whoever is convicted of an infringement is 
severely punished. 

"How did you manage," I inquired, "to pass this re- 
striction into law and make it operative?" 

Like many other laws, this one was the outcome of a 
public demand. One always gets what one really wants ; 
the difficulty is to want it. Do you suppose it was easy 
to prevent people from spitting in the streets and cars and 
bef owling the city ? Do you imagine that a mere municipal 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 263 

regulation would be sufficient to uproot bad habits once 
acquired? Certainly not. The persons principally inter- 
ested had to set to work. And who are they ? 

They are the women, the first to suffer from lack of 
education and laxity of conduct, and particularly from the 
drink habit. Drunkenness on the part of husband, father, 
brother or son reduces the women to mere slaves or accom- 
plices. Here they declined to put up with such degradation 
of themselves, their homes and their country, and they 
protested. They had first to contend with the public 
authorities' force of inertia. In the United States, as in 
other countries, drink is a great source of revenue for gov- 
ernments and for a great many individuals. Pohticians 
cannot venture to offend both the authorities and the 
voters. The best among them confine themselves to feeble 
complaints, which do nothing to prevent the country from 
being poisoned or to check drunkenness, crime and racial 
degeneration, spread broadcast by the very same consti- 
tuted authority that looks after national education. 

Here again, righteous wrath and energy have succeeded 
in upsetting the established order of things. The mothers 
took united action — there are mothers' associations in the 
United States — and gradually assembled an army of 
women around them. The soldiers of this army lost no 
time in futile complaints. They stirred up the children 
and the young, who are always ready to support bold ini- 
tiative. The army took the field, gave no quarter , won 
over the Church, the intellectuals and the great bulk of 
public opinion, and eventually became so powerful as to be 
able to defy the public authorities, the politicians and their 
supporters, and to compel the legislature at Springfield 
to take a referendum on the question. It led to the vic- 
tory the result of which I have just recorded. 

This victory is only a prelude. As soon as women real- 
ize that violence in all its forms, including those due to the 



264 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

intoxication of drink and of war, is the real danger to them- 
selves and to civiHzation, they will abandon their attitude of 
reserve, and humanity will be indebted to them for yet 
another benefit. Is it conceivable that mothers should 
have so long neglected to take an active interest in the 
cause of peace? Can it be that they have no use for their 
courage except to endure the calamities which it lies with 
them to prevent? Joan of Arc gave her life to drive the 
invader out of France, and American women will not con- 
fine themselves to the war on liquor. Their civic influence 
will increase in proportion to their consciousness of their 
own strength. 

6. Cincinnati. The Wealthy Man who does Good 

The name of this city is pronounced Cinsenata ! Why 
do the Americans say Cinsenata instead of Cincinnati, 
and Mezoura instead of Missouri ? It is a mystery to me, 
and to them also. One man who adopted a different pro- 
nunciation wrathfully informed me that the others could 
not even pronounce their names. Well, whatever the 
place be called, I arrived there very early in the morning, 
before time in fact, after leaving Urbana at midnight. It 
is a very disagreeable experience to be turned out of a 
railway car after having at last managed to go to sleep, to 
stand and shiver on a deserted platform and see the day- 
light, as undecided as one's self, begin to show itself in oppo- 
sition to the fading electric lamps in the gloomy atmos- 
phere of a big, monotonous, commonplace railroad station. 
It was not a pleasant first impression, and the worst of it 
was that I could not see the friends who were to have met me, 
and I had no idea where to look for them. I knew them 
only by name and was quite ignorant of their addresses. 
How was I to find them without risk of going wrong? I 
could see no one through the clouds of dust except the 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 265 

shadowy forms of a few sweepers. The station was not 
only cold but empty. With all the sensitiveness of a French- 
man, I immediately fell a victim to depression, and my 
mind began to run upon the American whose guest I was 
to be — Mr. Schmidlapp, an important Cincinnati manu- 
facturer and one of the most severely tried men in the 
world. He lost his wife and son in a terrible railroad 
disaster, and his young daughter was afterwards killed in 
an automobile accident. I was very reluctant to intrude 
myself in such a house of mourning, but he had insisted 
upon my coming. 

While I stood on the platform, not knowing what to do, 
two gentlemen passed close to me. They were as bright 
and full of conversation as if the day had been well advanced 
instead of only just begun. We looked at one another 
inquiringly. '^M. d'Estournelles?" they asked. ''Mr. 
Schmidlapp and Mr. Robertson?" was my query. They 
were my two hosts. They had been waiting for my train 
to come in on schedule time, while I was waiting for them. 
Mr. Schmidlapp has retired from business but has not 
lost interest in it. He has already disposed of all his 
money, keeping only enough to provide himself with an 
annuity. So far from giving way to grief, he devotes the 
whole of his still remarkable activity and resources to 
doing all the good he can. He does not allow his own 
sorrow to affect others and discourage them, but, on the 
contrary, tries to fortify them by his example. He acts 
on the philosopher's pregnant remark: ''Life continues." 
Instead of beginning to pity him, I find myself envying 
his moral courage. Though there is sometimes a far-away 
look in his eyes, his laugh is hearty and hospitable. An 
open automobile is waiting for us and we get into it, while 
Mr. Schmidlapp's friend, Mr. Robertson, the president of 
the Manufacturers' Club, which is combining with the 
two commercial and business clubs to organize my recep- 



266 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

tion, shakes hands with us and goes off to see that the 
arrangements are in good shape. Here again we have two 
thoroughly representative Americans. Though both very 
wealthy, here they are, up before daybreak, sacrificing their 
ease and even their private feelings, so as to do their best to 
make a success of a meeting in which their city is interested. 
The automobile took us uphill at a rate that threw us 
into each other's arms whenever we turned a corner. It 
seemed to me foolhardy, and I was expecting an accident 
every minute, but, as a matter of fact, our wild career did 
not even interrupt our conversation, and as in a dream our 
ascent ended on the terrace of a most magnificent natural 
amphitheater at the luxuriant summit of the hills which 
border the basin of the Ohio. Why name it? It is better 
than the Ohio, the ''beautiful river"; it is the river, the 
blood of the earth's veins ! It circles, stretches out, winds 
its long, broad sheet of water into a majestic curve, and 
moves like a caress, enveloping and enveloped, in the valley, 
which is both its creation and its cradle, through the herb- 
age that it fertilizes, past the cities to which it has given 
birth, past the hills, some fertile, some wooded, some popu- 
lated, where church towers and factory chimneys point in 
brotherly union to the sky. It is another vision of the 
past and the future. I have before me the road of central 
penetration, the first direct route followed by our French 
Canadian pioneers to Louisiana. But this route still exists ; 
history has not been able to change nature. The ''beauti- 
ful river" remains a symbol of union between the East and 
West, an arm stretched out to help men know and love 
one another. I cannot take my eyes from this panorama 
where, under the morning sun of May, blossom the ever- 
buoyant hopes of man and the fecundity of nature. The 
great curve which forms this river calls up in my mind 
other curves not less eloquent, those by which Carriere 
was all his life inspired when he painted the graceful ges- 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 267 

tures of the mother holding her child, or the ideal circle, 
the spiral without end, into which one of Bach's concertos 
carries and elevates us. 

The wealthy Cincinnati men who built their houses on 
the heights overlooking the Ohio provided themselves with 
a daily panorama of hope and life. They appreciate and 
understand their privilege, but they do not confine them- 
selves to mere enjoyment of it. They do their best to 
pay for it and to make due amends for its possession. I 
have already said that there are a great many wealthy 
Americans who do good; and this is quite usual. They 
are neither credulous nor sentimental. They cultivate 
goodness, not as a virtue but as a form of wisdom and 
strength. I often hear Americans say : ''We are punished 
by our sins and not for them." This goodness makes for 
patience, even temper and kindliness. 

On entering Mr. Schmidlapp's princely villa, situated 
amid lawns and shrubbery and overlooking the valley, I 
encountered his grandchildren, who were already up and 
in possession of the premises. They had made the great 
hall and parlor into a motor track, an electric railway sta- 
tion and a bicycle race track. As every one knows, chil- 
dren reign supreme in the United States. Another very 
modern grandfather once said at dinner, when the mistress 
of the house asked him if he would take the wing or the leg 
of a chicken: ''I don't know. I have never eaten the 
wing ; when I was young, we left it to our parents, and now 
we keep it for the children." 

If I were not afraid of offending so delicate a sentiment, 
I would say that, in America, doing good is less of a virtue 
than a resolve. A genuinely successful business man would 
spoil his career if he ended it like an egoist. He cultivates 
a recognition of his own good fortune and a readiness to 
help others, not as a duty but as a personal satisfaction; 
it is his way of living in graceful retirement. Many of the 



268 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

rich have gone still further, and are competing with one 
another to see who will do the best work in the cause of 
charity. Discussing the various institutions founded by 
Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Schmidlapp frankly told me that 
this example had opened his eyes and that he was trying 
to imitate it. He does not confine himself to giving money ; 
he does his best, for instance, to find out the most practical 
system of old-age pensions, and he works it successfully 
for the benefit of the large staff for whom he is still morally 
responsible. He is, of course, a great advocate of individual 
enterprise and a strong opponent of state monopolies. 
One of his friends, Theodore Marburg, whose guest I was 
at Baltimore, is also, together with the whole of his large 
family, fully persuaded that he owes a debt to society for 
his own prosperity, and he spends his life trying to pay this 
debt. Another, Edward Tuck, divides his life and his 
fortune between the United States and France, and calls 
devotion ''the highest form of egotism." Yet another, 
Loubat, persists in founding professorships in Paris, and 
organizes excavations in Mexico and at Delos. Rockefeller 
made a present of Pasteur's house to the town of Dole. 
Hyde was the originator of the system of "exchange pro- 
fessorships. '^ Andrew Carnegie provided the Peace Palace 
and instituted rewards for civic heroism. Vanderbilt 
created centers for the supply of milk to the poor. Pier- 
pont Morgan enriched our museums, and many other in- 
stances might be cited. 

We must beware of forgetting that good actions of this 
kind are accomplished by Europeans also. I could mention 
them by thousands, and Americans are, after all, only 
expatriated Europeans. In most American cities I found 
institutions such as Tulane, Etienne Girard, etc., all of 
French origin. Michelet gracefully described the Dutch 
as being miserly so that they could be generous, avares 
pour etre genereux, and the phrase can be applied equally 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 269 

well to many an industrious, economical and sober French- 
man. I observe, however, that nearly all these donors, 
whether French, EngUsh or of any other nationality, are 
men who have traveled. It seems as if generosity follows 
in the path of activity and slackens in proportion as we 
become sedentary. The man who has retired from his 
profession or lives on his means is generally ready to pull 
the ladder up after him when he has climbed as high as he 
expects to go, and he even forgets how to return thanks. 
Philanthropists in the Old World have to try to counteract 
an atmosphere of egotism and routine, whereas, in the 
United States, the prevailing energy acts as a stimulant 
for them. 

Generosity is simply a higher form of youthfulness and 
activity. When Mr. Schmidlapp returns home from down 
town, he gives his mind to rearing chickens, cows and calves, 
not to mention vegetables and orchids. He also carries 
out social experiments. In this connection, I am indebted 
to him for a new fact, which is not without its value. By 
a lucky coincidence, the Civil War veterans — living re- 
minders of the Cincinnati who gave the city its name — 
held their banquet the same day as mine ; and they invited 
a distinguished officer. Col. Robert M. Thompson, who was 
also one of Mr. Schmidlapp's guests, to speak. In conver- 
sation with him, I discovered that, in spite of the assertions 
of a Cincinnati paper, the colonel was a consistent advocate 
of an American- Japanese entente cordiale. Far from keep- 
ing to the mere pleading of his cause, Colonel Thompson de- 
votes part of his money to paying the expenses of several 
promising young Japanese at x\merican universities. I 
have since lunched with this alleged jingo at his home in 
Washington. His daughter sings German and French 
songs delightfully, his grandchildren speak French with 
their mother, and his servants and most trusted assistants 
are Japanese or English. 



270 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

After a visit to the college, I went to the club, where I 
met some of the leading citizens of Cincinnati and the 
governor of the state, whose presence sharpened my feel- 
ings of regret and remorse — for I speak of what I have 
seen and not of what I have missed. To go straight from 
Urbana to Cincinnati looks a simple proposition, especially 
as the traveling was done by night ; but the truth is that 
I went through three states — parts of Illinois, Indiana and 
Ohio — and skipped several places that I ought to have 
visited but had to leave out owing to lack of time. The 
trouble with night travel is that one begins to think there 
is nothing in the world but cities, and to ignore the country. 
I should have spent at least a few hours at Indianapolis, a 
great city of nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants, 
from which I had received many urgent and moving appeals, 
especially from Spiceland Academy. In Ohio itself, a state 
justly proud of the active part it plays in the federation 
and of its great cities, there was Columbus, the capital, 
to begin with — another railroad center, a city of over one 
hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants and an important 
market for the iron, steel, coal and milling industries, not 
to mention Toledo, a river and lake port, Dayton, the 
home of the Wright brothers, and Cleveland. I have 
undertaken to return to the United States so as to visit 
several cities I was obliged to miss, such as Athens (Georgia) 
and notably Cleveland, which is extending freely, without 
forts and without fear, opposite Canada, on the shore of 
Lake Erie. Cleveland already has 400,000 inhabitants. 
Its development dates from the construction of the Ohio 
Canal ; its future is barely beginning. 

Cincinnati, Cleveland's elder sister, has not quite so large 
a population. Cincinnati, the Queen of the West fifty 
years ago, is already an old city and will soon complete a 
century of legal existence ! Its nearness to the two states 
of Kentucky and Indiana makes it really the geographical 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 27 1 

capital of three states, but St. Louis has outstripped it, 
and Chicago has deprived it of the pork monopoly that 
first made it celebrated in the business world. It never- 
theless retains its activity and its reputation, quite worthy 
of a state that has set the others such great examples and 
whose charitable institutions and asylums for the blind, 
for the deaf and dumb and for backward children are in 
themselves an indication of the progress it has accomplished. 
Cincinnati still has its unequaled position and its past. 
Lafayette once came to Cincinnati with his son, in 1825, 
on a pilgrimage that is not yet forgotten. A very old lady, 
whom the French hero kissed when she was a little girl 
is still living, and well remembers the event. At more 
than one of my lectures, and even as far away as Denver, 
I met octogenarian ladies who knew Lafayette. 

The banquet in the evening was one of the finest and 
most instructive of all those given me in the United States. 
It was planned long beforehand, and the menu was emblem- 
atical, not only of Franco-American union, but of arbitration 
and aviation. It was attended by all the most prominent 
manufacturers and business men in Cincinnati and the 
neighboring cities. Not one of them even imagined that 
patriotism could be out of harmony with the organization 
of peace. They recognize the obstacles to the establish- 
ment of an honorable and generally accepted peace basis 
in Europe, but these obstacles are, in their view, just so 
many reasons for trying to overcome them. War, to their 
minds, will end by being practically impossible, not through 
the influence of justice and morals only but because, as a 
question of fact, it will do infinitely more harm than good, 
and because the whole world will suffer from this harm 
for generations, and perhaps even for centuries. I should 
greatly like to see these business men combining with 
Norman Angell to give BerHn, London, St. Petersburg and 
Rome the benefit of their statement of the case — a state- 



272 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

ment which is beginning to be no novelty in Paris, where 
ideas have certainly made more progress than elsewhere. 
''We want peace," they say, ''because it is the basis of our 
entire national superstructure. Peace endangered is quite 
enough to cause ruin, but when there is an actual breach 
of the peace, and war is declared between two great powers, 
we have a state of things that amounts to voluntarily 
inflicting a scourge on the world, or committing suicide for 
no conceivable reason. The war between the United States 
and Spain was, after all, only a colonial struggle, Hke that 
between Russia and Japan and between England and the 
Boers, as well as the operations in Tunis, Tongking and 
Morocco. I am glad to think that no small state will 
ever be prevented from taking up arms for its independence ; 
but can any one seriously imagine a war between England 
and Germany, France and Germany or England and Russia ? 
It would mean a stoppage of life all over the world; our 
markets abroad would be closed, our communications by 
sea interrupted and our national industry suddenly para- 
lyzed ; and, together with all this, we should have incal- 
culable misery, disorder, disturbances and internal and 
external conflagrations breaking out simultaneously in 
various parts of the globe, both on land and sea. It would 
be a foretaste of the end of the world. We have only to look 
at the ruin caused in Paris and London by a mere local panic 
Hke the one that occurred in Wall Street. What would it 
be if the panic became general and caused an exodus from 
the fields, factories, seaports, warehouses, stores, schools and 
pubHc offices?"^ What every one wants is organization 
to maintain peace as the crown and condition of progress ; 
and I did not fail to support this view. The most convinc- 

^ This is what we wanted to prevent, and this is what has happened. 
The "inevitable war" party in Europe did not encounter the resistance 
fortunately offered to it hitherto by public opinion in the United States. 
(March, 191 5.) 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 273 

ing argument of all I kept for the end. I have worked in 
France for aviation just as I have for arbitration, but I 
was soon caught up and left behind. I could hardly help 
indulging in such reminiscences this evening, as Orville 
Wright was sitting near me. He was invited at my request, 
and he was good enough to come from Dayton to meet me. 

Peace and Aviation 

With him I went over the ground covered within three 
years. Congress, which is always more generous than Euro- 
pean parliaments, had just caused a beautiful commemora- 
tive medal to be struck and presented to the brothers 
Wright in testimony of the admiration and gratitude of 
the American nation. But, only three years ago, the 
Americans, open as they are to new ideas, undoubtedly 
failed to reaUze what their enterprising countrymen were 
trying to do. They had so little belief in the Wrights that 
Wilbur, the elder, had to come to France, and, as my good 
luck would have it, he carried out his first trials in my 
own part of the country, at Auvours Camp, near Le Mans. 
The early weeks produced only a few seconds of flight, which 
then extended into minutes. By degrees he flew higher 
and higher and longer and longer until he was able to 
remain a whole hour among the clouds, three hundred feet 
high, and finally he took a passenger. I saw all this, 
just as I saw Farman, Santos-Dumont, Delagrange, Arch- 
deacon, Lambert, Bleriot, Latham, Paulhan, Ferber and 
many more, but what also attracted my attention was the 
public. Thousands and thousands of peasants left their 
work, hurried from every point of the compass, and waited 
patiently and uncomplainingly (those light-headed and friv- 
olous Frenchmen !) for days and days, until the capricious 
bird at length made up its mind to fly. At that moment 
a sort of transfiguration showed itself on even the hardest 



274 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

faces. It was the realization of a hope by a people that 
has suffered much but has never given way to despair. 
There was an even finer and grander sight next year on the 
plains of Champagne, at Betheny, where miUions of French- 
men, a nation in themselves, came to cheer the already 
triumphant science of aviation. It is generally admitted 
that those days at Betheny formed a series of the finest 
possible festivals imaginable. They were festivals of pa- 
triotism and the human race. There was nothing admin- 
istrative or official about them. The immense crowd kept 
itself in order instinctively. The spectators needed no 
word of command except from the voice of a common con- 
science enjoining respect for courage, unassuming pluck and 
inventiveness. I might go further and say they were 
praying in a truly religious spirit for a better and happier 
future. From ground watered by the blood of centuries of 
battles there went up, on wings, to heaven, a symbol of 
the ultimate progress for which humanity has clamored 
untiringly since Prometheus's time. 

*'I am glad I lived to see this," was the general remark 
made by our old peasants throughout the length and 
breadth of France. Though they said no more, the rest 
could be read in their tear-dimmed eyes. The meaning of 
what they had seen came to them, not clearly, but out of the 
depths of their souls. It was a belief that a great revulsion, 
the one great revulsion, was in preparation — the triumph 
of reason over brute force and of genius over violence. 

Who beheved in such a triumph ten years ago? Who 
took it seriously ? It was a mere joke. 

Exactly the same thing has happened with international 
justice, another dream which was put down as an impossi- 
biHty in fact.-^ 

^We cannot too often repeat that the 1914-1915 war confirms the 
dangers we have pointed out, and all our views. 

France at least has the satisfaction and the advantage of knowing that 



THE STATES OF ILLINOIS AND OHIO 275 

Next afternoon, after visiting the gardens, farm, poultry 
yard and stables, and casting a final glance on the lovely 
panorama of the Ohio, I finally embarked on the train 
that was to land us next morning at Washington, where I 
was to see President Taft and bring him news of his family 
and numerous friends at Cincinnati. 

Another attention paid me (what shall I become if people 
spoil me so ?) was that Mr. Schmidlapp came with me, and 
Colonel Thompson, who was also returning to Washington, 
reserved a train for us, or at any rate two cars in the train, 
forming a traveling hotel, in which each of us had his room 
communicating with the parlor and, through the parlor, 
with the dining-room. 

7. End of the First Part of My Campaign 

Thus ends the first part of my long campaign through 
the length and breadth of the United States. I return to 
Washington, my task accomplished. Nothing now remains 
for me but to revisit the East, which I know already, look 
up my friends and arrange my notes and the ideas I have 
garnered in exchange for those I have sown. 

she did not declare this war. She has had to endure it. She is carr3ang it 
on without counting its cost, regarding it as a sacred duty to fight, against 
mihtary despotism, in the interest of other nations as well as her own. 
Two 'forces are in conjflict : the past, represented by violence, and the 
future, represented by justice. The latter will triumph, and then it will be 
incumbent upon modern civihzation to provide the organization for which 
we have asked and for which we have paved the way : the further organiza- 
tion of all forms of progress, which has hitherto been wanting : the organiza- 
tion of peace. (March, 191 5.) 



PART II 
PROBLEMS 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 

I. Back to Washington. A non-central Federal center. Fate 
of a world decided by one city and one man. Awakening. Out- 
burst of spring. Residential quarter. Children. Society women. 
Springtime of a nation. — 2. Plan of the Federal City; how 
it was carried out. Major L'Enfant. The Capitol taking the 
place of the Pantheon. The spirit of Franklin. Public spirit. — 

3. City Planning. Blessings of air and sunshine. Rehgion of 
beauty. Walks. Children's crusades against dirt. Women again. 

4. Washington's Park. Trees, birds: the eagle and the blue- 
bird. — 5. The Art of Gardening. Gardening is international- 
ized and democratized. Cheap horticulture. More pleasure for 
less trouble and less cost. Bouquets of leaves. Turfed walks. 
Creation of natural taste. — 6. Mount Vernon and the White 
House. The American middle class and the traditions of the 
simple life. Pilgrimages to Mount Vernon. A city of gratitude. 
Visits to the White House in 1902, 1907, 191 1 and 191 2. Mr. 
Roosevelt and Mr. Taft. My appeal to President Roosevelt in 
1902. The Hague tribunal saved by the United States. Conse- 
quences of this action. Mr. Taft and arbitration treaties. Is their 
failure to be deplored ? The White House as battle field. Capital 
or court of a democracy ? The eagle or the star ? 

I. Back to Washington 

Here I am, back again in the East after my long journey 
from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, from Texas to the 
Pacific Ocean and the neighborhood of British Columbia, 
from the Rocky Mountains to the prairie, the Mississippi 
and the Great Lakes : back to Washington once more, 
but with entirely new ideas. Hitherto I had always come 
from Europe, and everything looked American to me. 

279 



28o AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

This time I came the other way, leaving America behind 
me, and I wondered whether everything would strike 
me as European. 

A Non-central Federal Center 

This is the Federal capital's chief danger. By no exercise 
of human wisdom or ambition could it have been foreseen, 
very little more than a century ago, that the capital would 
become so un-central as to be more than 2500 miles from 
San Francisco. What course will it take? Toward the 
past, toward the Old World on the opposite side of the ocean, 
or toward the New World of which it is only nominally the 
center? It is a serious question and brings us back to 
another : which of the two worlds will influence the other ? 
Will the new allow itself to be contaminated by the faults 
of the old, or will it react? All the young states I have 
visited and all the cities in process of formation have made 
me share their faith in the future ; but this future is not 
entirely in their hands. They have nothing to fear from 
within, and still less from without, provided they remain 
united, and this they all realize; but this very union 
is centered here in Washington, and this is where 
it can be strengthened or affected, no matter how pro- 
nounced the general feeling may be, by a mistake on the 
part of the central government. However jealous the 
forty-eight separate states of the Union may be of 
their independence, every one of them needs a Federal 
government to keep them in line, to turn their ambition 
into one natural channel, to restrain them when they are 
impatient, and, in brief, to assume the responsibiHty of 
managing the great pubHc services, common to all. So 
strong is still the feeling of mistrust among the states that 
they have not agreed to let Washington's dream be a reality 
and allow the capital to become both the political and 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 28 1 

intellectual center of the country by making it the site of a 
great national university. There is no Federal university 
at Washington, but it cannot do without a general admin- 
istrative office for agriculture, for commerce, customs, 
transport and pubhc health, an office for foreign affairs and 
a ministry of national defense. In other words, the future 
of the whole country, prosperity, peace and war are in the 
hands of the Federal administration. One cannot but trem- 
ble for the United States when it is remembered that the 
whole of this administration is intrusted, for four years, to 
one man ! If we carry analysis to its conclusion, we find 
that the fate of a world is decided by one city and one 
man. 

Let us Europeans harbor no delusions in this matter; 
the risk, though remote, is no less for us than it is for 
the Americans. Their destiny is as closely bound up 
with ours as if the Atlantic Ocean had no existence what- 
ever. 

Every one knows the precautions taken by the founders 
of the capital to prevent it from being suspected of belonging 
to any one state more than the others. The District of 
Columbia was created and neutralized, with the consent 
of the adjoining states of Virginia and Maryland, for the 
express purpose of placing the capital in it. The district 
has no representatives, and its inhabitants have no vote. 
Consequently, the elected representatives of the states 
are all equally at home in it. The city itself, after some 
unsuccessful experiments, is now administered by Congress. 
This is a great advantage as regards municipal government 
— an advantage that more than one capital might envy ; 
but the fact remains that the general action of Congress 
is carried on in an atmosphere in which the steadily increas- 
ing skeptical and bureaucratic element will end by being 
out of harmony with the single-minded enthusiasm of the 
country. 



282 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Awakening 

Such were my reflections as we reached Washington on 
the morning of Friday, May 5, a bright, joyous morning 
that put my gloomy thoughts to rout. It was a sudden 
and surprising outburst of spring — a combination of grace, 
Hght and expansion of living beings and things under a 
clear blue sky and amid a warmth that was already per- 
ceptible. 

Residential Quarter 

Having a few hours of solitude before me, I took advan- 
tage of them to wander around the residential district, 
where every house, in conformity with a general scheme of 
striking effectiveness, nestles amid shrubbery, flowers and 
lawns. Each one has its own style, generally resembling 
that of an English cottage, and is built of dark brickwork 
against which stands out the tender green of the young plane 
trees and the Carolina poplars planted in lines on each side 
of the street. There is no attempt at symmetry in the 
architecture of the buildings, except that they are all made 
to harmonize in proportion to the size of the trees. There 
is nothing gigantic here ; it is an orderly combination of 
variety and due restraint. Everything points to good 
manners, voluntary discipline, a general participation in 
upkeep, a spontaneous desire for decorative effect and the 
appearance of a town in whose adornment its inhabit- 
ants delight. Fortunately the ground is naturally undu- 
lating, and leveling has not been carried to excess. The 
gradients are as much as the promenader could desire. 
The streets are, in fact, promenades or wooded avenues 
striking out from circles and squares like the crossroads in 
a forest. Some one must have dreamed of a great city with 
streets like parks and gardens. This dream has become a 
reality at Washington, one of the most beautiful cities in 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 283 

the world. The statues and monuments, after which the 
various ovals, "circles," squares, ''grounds" and gardens 
are named, are not all admirable, but this matters little. 
To my mind, they are merely details in the landscape, to 
which they add the charm of naivete. Perhaps form 
delights my eye less than the sunshine and light of early 
May ; but Washington is, to my mind, the capital of spring, 
surpassed by Paris alone. Everything in it breathes the 
joy of life and the art of living. 

Children 

Washington has a very animated look. The street, just 
as if it were a path through the woods, belongs to the 
children, — it is the same throughout America, — the 
squirrels and the birds. All these youngsters disport 
themselves freely in it — how they manage it I do not 
know — without damaging the flower beds. Stretching 
away into the distance there is a succession of boys and 
girls, all bareheaded and without any grown-ups to look 
after them, hurrying along with vigorous strokes of their 
slender legs on their roller skates. They carry their copy- 
books under their arms, and swerve and dart capriciously 
like so many swallows. The asphalt has been watered with 
an antiseptic solution and looks as if it had been laid on 
purpose for them. Carriages and automobiles keep clear 
of them, or perhaps it would be more exact to say that they 
dare everything and are training themselves to run risks. 
There are a great many maimed people in the United States, 
but, after all, they are in the minority, and the sport con- 
sists of keeping in the majority, which has developed its 
arms, legs, lungs and level-headedness. 

I see no more of the children, who are no doubt at school, 
but now come the babies, some toddling about in bright- 
colored cloaks in front of stylish-looking nurses, and others 



284 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

in perambulators provided with an extraordinary number 
of springs and varnished up to such a pitch of poHsh as to 
put porcelain into the shade. In a double perambulator 
— just as great a rarity in Washington as in Paris, where 
good society is not prolific — are a pair of peaceful twins 
dressed with exquisite taste. 

At 10 o'clock, after the babies have been out for some 
time, the American society woman appears — ^^incessu 
patuit dea" — the greatest ornament and the highest 
expression of luxury in the United States. I see her move 
on, sure of herself, well aware of her power to please and 
glad of it. She walks with her light and queenly step, just 
as she will make her entrance this evening into some recep- 
tion room, where I shall no doubt meet her and hear her 
discuss Paris, in French, with her friends and rivals as 
beautifully dressed and fascinating as herself, all together 
in a group Hke a bouquet of Hving flowers. Every one 
wears a crown of light hair, as luminous as a halo. Her 
complexion is always fresh and without a trace of fatigue. 
She is glad to be alive. She is a blossom in a chalice of 
silky fabrics. Carelessly fastened round her neck is a 
pearl necklace falling on her corsage like a ribbon. 

O American women, elective queens, an aristocracy in 
a democracy, what sums of money your husbands, your 
fathers and the whole of your country must make 
to go on supplying you with dress! It is some con- 
solation to think that a large part of the money will be 
spent in Paris! But, rather than think, let us keep our 
eyes open. Flowers, women, children, avenues of new ver- 
dure brightened by new houses, all combine in my memory 
to form a symbol : a new springtime, the springtime of a 
nation. That being so, why should I disquiet myself? 
Was there ever a spring without a summer? Vitality will 
overcome the dangers that experience suggests to my mind. 
Washington will triumph over all difficulties as she has 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 285 

triumphed over them already, and as she does again this 
spring morning. The poet's words, resound in my ears : 

" Et les fruits passeront les promesses des fleurs." 
(And the fruit shall surpass the promise of the flower.) 

2. The Federal City Plan 

Washington owes its beauty to its design and its vigi- 
lant public spirit rather than to its climate, which is by no 
means perfect, or to its position, which is rather ordinary. 
It is built after a plan often spoiled in the carrying out, but 
admirably conceived. General Washington and Jefferson 
had been obliged to select its location through political and 
not through aesthetic reasons. They had to place it near 
the point of junction between the Northern and Southern 
states, the West at that time being merely a possibiKty of 
the future. A great city was not wanted. Philadelphia 
had to be given up on account of rioting, and the seat of 
what had become a nomadic government was changed no 
less than eight times in twenty years. Safety was abso- 
lutely necessary. After all, Versailles, St. Petersburg and 
The Hague, not to mention others, were political capitals. 
The architect thus had to create everything, but he had no 
hindrance to encounter from Nature, and still less from the 
past. 

Charles V Enfant 

Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the United 
States, this architect was more of an artist than a 
courtier, and was guided more by conscience than by in- 
terest, with the result that his work ended better than 
himself. He was called Pierre Charles L'Enfant, and was 
a Frenchman, an engineer officer and the son, I believe, of 
a painter. Like every one else in Europe at the time, his 
ideas were inspired by the vast proportions and long-drawn- 



286 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

out perspectives that characterized French architecture in 
the reign of Louis XIV, and he was more or less imbued 
by the conceptions of our landscape architects, such as 
Le Notre, Mansard and Gabriel. He came to America 
with Lafayette, according to some, while others say he 
was on board one of the ships in Beaumarchais's fleet. He 
won Washington's esteem by his fortifications and con- 
structions, which brought him into prominence and pro- 
cured him the post of chief engineer, with the rank of 
major. When the time came, he claimed the honor of 
drawing up the plan for the future capital of America. Jef- 
ferson himself brought back ideas for cities, and even 
plans, from France. L'Enfant's proposal was especially 
well received because it was conceived on a very large and 
already American scale and combined with French art. It 
was meant for the capital of a federation such as had never 
yet existed and had no rival; for the capital of a state 
^'not with a few milHon but with hundreds of millions of 
inhabitants." 

An attentive examination of his plan, which is preserved 
in the archives of Congress at Washington, shows strikingly 
how very idealistic was its conception and how distinctly 
revolutionary was its tendency. L'Enfant had imagined 
what was really a new city for a new epoch, and he was as 
much inspired by the faith of a believer as by the prophetic 
genius of an artist. Washington is a capital in which all 
the public buildings are subordinated to the houses of 
Congress, these taking the place of a Pantheon. It is the 
capital of a nation that has liberated itself, and it has been 
thus defined by Rufus Choate : "We built a Capitol and 
not a temple ; we consult the Constitution and not oracles." 
What a magnificent insight into the future of their work 
had these men who planned the largest capital in the world 
for a weak little republic — so weak, in fact, that its con- 
tinued existence was by no means sure ! I feel as if I must 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 287 

have known Major L'Enfant — he was well named. The 
number of his kind in France is legion. Who will write 
the history of the enterprises started by Frenchmen in 
other countries? 

Difficulties commenced for L'Enfant from the beginning. 
Jefferson praised the plan which had made headway in 
most of the old cities of the United States, the brutally 
simple system of uniform blocks, with the city cut up like 
a checkerboard by streets crossing at right angles without 
any space left for the imagination to take flight. L^Enfant 
resisted and proposed an amendment which changed every- 
thing. For the right angle he substituted the acute angle, 
or at least he introduced into his plan so far as possible the 
pure symbolic conception of the starry heaven, the city 
firmament whose application is seen in the circles of Ver- 
sailles and St. Cloud, whence avenues radiate in all direc- 
tions. General Washington accepted this plan, and L'En- 
fant set to work in the spring of 1791, with what intense 
interest may be imagined. To have an absolutely free 
surface, as unobstructed as the sky, on which to build, 
must have been a remarkable experience for a European 
architect, constantly held up by vested rights such as those 
of the landlord, the neighbors, the military authorities, 
history and routine. L'Enfant could take all the land he 
wanted. The Capitol, built on a hill a hundred feet above 
the Potomac and the Anacostia, and overlooking the junc- 
tion of the two rivers, was the central feature of his plan, 
as the city was to be the center of the Union ; but since his 
day the city has extended westward, like the country. The 
Capitol was a star of the first magnitude in the constella- 
tion conceived by L'Enfant. The magnificent Pennsyl- 
vania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware avenues 
started from the Capitol. The other "stars," which in 
course of time have become the most attractive, for a long 
time existed only on paper. The Government Building, 



288 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

the White House, also surrounded by parks, and placed, so 
to speak, under the presidency of the Capitol, was not far 
away. It formed the center of the second great star, from 
which Connecticut Avenue, Vermont Avenue, Sixteenth 
Street, etc., radiated; and this star was connected with 
the first, so that there was an equally open perspective from 
either, by Pennsylvania Avenue, just as it is now with the 
PubHc Health Museum, the Library in Mount Vernon 
Square, and five other "stars" — Dupont, Washington, 
Scott, Thomas and Iowa. The two great government 
buildings were to have been connected, on the Potomac 
side, by two magnificent promenades or rectangular parks 
with majestic vistas of lawns. One was to have been car- 
ried westward from the Capitol and the other southward 
from the White House, so as to meet at right angles and 
surround the monument erected by a grateful nation to 
George Washington. These two avenues would have 
formed the two sides of a triangle having Pennsylvania 
Avenue as its hypothenuse, but they were never carried out. 
Pennsylvania Avenue was massacred by unpatriotic prop- 
erty owners, but it was a considerable achievement to save 
the two promenades — the Executive Grounds and the Mall. 
Additions were even made to them by reclaiming ground 
from the river and forming what is now the Propagating 
Gardens. An architect might find a likeness between this 
plan and that of western Paris from the Tuileries to the 
Bois de Boulogne, with the Barriere de I'Etoile — the Arc 
de Triomphe — on the top ; while the White House might 
be imagined as standing in a Place de la Concorde adorned 
with flower beds and bordered with gardens. 

The plan was soon finished and approved. The three 
commissioners, Thomas Johnson, David Stuart and Daniel 
Carroll, who were appointed to receive it, merely asked 
that it should be engraved, so that prints could be supplied 
to members of Congress before the end of the year 1791 and 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 289 

arrangements made without delay for parceling out and 
selling the lots. L' Enfant refused to agree to this, on the 
ground that the best lots would be bought up by specu- 
lators and that it would become impossible or ridiculous 
to carry out his plan. The committee insisted and L^En- 
fant resisted ; they quarreled, and he was finally obliged 
to resign (March i, 1792). It is probable that he made 
himself unbearable, like every man who places his work 
above the necessities of his time and tries to protect it 
against contemporary impatience. In any case, he spent 
the closing years of his life in disgrace. There is something 
about this that requires clearing up ; for while Americans 
have their faults, they are not ungrateful, and the fact re- 
mains that L'Enfant complained bitterly. The American 
architect. Glen Brown, in his very fine history of the Capitol, 
states that the streets, the parks and the sites of the Capitol 
and the White House are to-day just as they were shown 
on L'Enfant's plan. In his list of disbursements he includes 
the following item, which seems to suggest that L'Enfant 
was very poorly, grudgingly and tardily paid: "ReKef 
for L'Enfant : paid to Peter Charles L'Enfant the sum of 
666 dollars f , in settlement for his services in drawing up 
the plan of Washington, plus legal interest from March i, 
1792, making in all 1,394 dollars 20 cents." He dates this 
entry May i, 18 10, from which it would appear that 
L'Enfant had to wait eighteen years for payment. " He 
died June 14, 1825," writes Louis Gillet, the architect, ''at 
the house of some kind souls who had given him shelter. 
When his room was entered, the plan of Washington was 
found still clasped in his icy hand. Neither cross nor 
tombstone marks his last resting place." 

His plan was taken up by his fellow worker, Andrew 

ElHcott. After such a beginning, it would not have been 

surprising if little had been left of the original plan, but 

nevertheless the Americans adhered to it as a whole. The 

u 



290 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Capitol, burned by the English in 1814, was rebuilt and 
enlarged on the same site. It is worthy of its importance. 
It is sufficiently well fitted up to contain the offices of some 
remarkable public services; and its symboHcal sateUite, 
rather too close but justly celebrated, is the Library of 
Congress. Many other buildings have been erected since 
then, and though General Washington's national univer- 
sity is not among them, there are at least institutions 
such as we do not possess in Europe^ for want of money, 
one of them being the Weather Bureau, which in itself is 
a speaking synopsis of the services that the Federal city can 
render, not only to the United States, but to the world. It 
is an innovation of incalculable value to navigators, agri- 
culturists, etc. The spirit of Franklin shows itself in the 
creation of the Weather Bureau. It is even better than 
the lightning conductor ; it provides a means of keeping in 
constant touch with atmospheric changes and preventing 
accidents and catastrophes. I have known the French 
navy to make free use of and express the highest apprecia- 
tion of the information sent out freely every day by this 
bureau. I could say as much for the Census Bureau, the 
Public Health Bureau, and the Pan-American palace, etc. 
All these public services, all more or less unforeseen, have 
found their proper places in due course in the plan of the 
Capitol. 

The city of Washington has, in short, thanks to the fore- 
sight, amounting to genius, of its founders, saved the cost 
of the mistakes for which other capitals are trying, at 
great expense, to atone. It has passed through periods of 
profanation, but it has preserved its personahty. Paris 
has incurred the same dangers and is still incurring them. 
This is less evident because Paris was planned in a way 
that cannot be compared to any other city ; but how those 
plans are disregarded ! While we find cities all over the 
world, not only in America but in Germany, Belgium and 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 29 1 

England, coming back to the principle of large open spaces 
favored by our fathers, we do not, it is true, go so far as 
to narrow the Champs Elysees, but we allow the effect of the 
Arc de Triomphe to be spoiled by hotels, theaters and adver- 
tisements. Our finest houses have no gardens, and scarcely 
even courtyards. They are like tombs hidden behind im- 
posing frontages. 

Public Spirit 

All this is very discouraging for the admirers and dis- 
ciples of Paris. If we go on in this way, Paris will end by 
losing its reputation, not as a fine city, but as an agreeable 
one. It will put itself on the Hst of cities that are visited 
but no longer lived in. There are plenty of people in 
France who realize this, but only a few here and there who 
raise their voices against it. The government manages us in 
France. In America pubHc spirit manages the government, 
as we have seen and shall see again. Bad government is a 
punishment. 

3. City Planning 

Washington has become a triumphant example of what, 
in the New World, is commonly called city planning, or the 
art of constructing cities. 

City planning is advancing concurrently with progress in 
domestic architecture and in everything else. Every one 
realizes that he cannot interest himself in his own house 
without also taking interest in his street and city. Every- 
thing changes with disconcerting speed. Electric tramways 
are irresistible factors in bringing about transformations. 
They are continually suggesting new needs. They carry 
ideas about, even more than passengers. They drag the 
workman from drink, and they save both citizens and cities. 
Progress ceases to give satisfaction, and perfection is aimed 
at. People are no longer content with proper sanitary 



292 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

arrangements in their houses, baths and a plentiful supply 
of water, gas and electricity. All these things belong to 
the past. Now the cry is for fresh air, and people get it ; 
for the country, and they get that also, as far as it can be 
replaced by trees, lawns and flowers. 

Blessings of Air and Sunshine 

The modern complement, which will soon be in 
universal demand, of the house and city consists of 
the blessings of air and light. ''Give us pure air and 
pure food, both for our minds and bodies," will be what 
voters, women as well as men, will require from city 
and national representatives throughout the country. 
There can be no mistaking the fact that demands, which 
used to originate more or less from a sense of justice 
or charity, are now the outcome of a direct interest. The 
benefit and the necessity of relaxation have been discovered, 
and rest, leisure, cheerfulness, health and beauty appear 
in their true Hght as valuable producing factors. The reH- 
gion of beauty is taking its place in American habits of 
thought. People who are indifferent to Ruskin's ideas, or 
skeptical about them, are plentiful in America, but he has 
no opponents. It is generally admitted that "beauty 
pays, and that beauty in a city creates prosperity and social 
harmony." ''The commercial value of beauty has been 
misunderstood," and now we find modern cities emulating 
one another in plans for improvement and extensions, open 
spaces, playgrounds and promenades. I can hardly be- 
Heve my eyes. As a Frenchman, the son and grandson 
of hard-working Frenchmen, I can remember the time when 
the word "promenade" used to imply a suspicion of lazi- 
ness and loss of time. Promenading was looked at 
askance. " Je n'ai pas le temps de me promener" (I have 
no time to take walks) and "qu'il aille se promener" (I wish 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 293 

he would go and take a walk !) are proverbial expressions of 
impatience. The walk we were made to take every Thurs- 
day, when I was at college, was looked upon as an infliction. 
M. Challemel-Lacour, who was the French ambassador in 
London when I was on the staff of the embassy thirty years 
ago, and whose style of speech always impressed me, re- 
marked one day when I had been out with some English 
friends : ''When I was your age, I had never been for a walk." 
I did not laugh at this thrust, knowing as I did that it was 
the expression of a past worthy of infinite respect — the 
intense effort made by France, after every crisis, to make 
up by hard work for the mistakes of its governments. 

It has taken forty-three years of peace to bring us back to 
normal conditions of life. After securing their independ- 
ence the Americans, unHke the peoples of central Europe, 
had no experience of real invasions or of the hard times 
which follow them. Their three wars of modern times 
were not wars at all, compared with ours. They have been 
able to give themselves up unreservedly to the joy of plan- 
ning their cities so as to live comfortably in them, and of 
building up an attractive young country calculated to 
inspire its inhabitants with attachment for it. Let them 
realize, and not forget, that their success in this task is 
due to peace. Through this cause, also, sports and outdoor 
games have developed, among them as among the EngHsh, 
the taste and need for outdoor life, to the great advantage 
of their moral and physical welfare. 

These various causes, and particularly the advance in 
public spirit, help to explain the progress of municipal Kfe, 
which is the basis of national progress in the United States. 
It also supplies an explanation of many private organiza- 
tions which exercise a tutelary control over the public 
departments. These organizations may strike us as very 
daring and paradoxical, but they have nevertheless proved 
their usefulness. 



294 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The most beautiful cities in the world, including Paris, 
lose their charm if they are not kept clean. The construc- 
tion of a city is one thing ; its cleanliness is another. Ameri- 
cans start frankly with the proposition that cleanHness is 
not to be expected from grown-up people in general, and 
they have hit upon the idea of utiHzing the spirit of emula- 
tion among children, by putting them in the forefront of a 
crusade against dirt. In 1899 the number of children's 
leagues of this kind was 47, and in two years this number 
was doubled. 

Religion of Beauty 

The movement naturally follows its course from the 
street to instruction and education. Illustrated books are 
published and distributed in the schools. Special news- 
papers, lectures with dissolving views, showing excursions to 
beautiful places, even as far away as Paris, are organized, 
with an accompaniment of songs, banners, badges and 
everything that can arouse enthusiasm among children. 
A sanitary commission and a vigilance committee teach 
children not to soil the streets and to keep the houses and 
apartments clean. Apostles of material and moral clean- 
Hness devote their hves to the cause, which is being propa- 
gated in France by the works of Charles Gide and G. 
Benoit-Levy. The movement has already borne fruit; 
independently of juvenile crime, which has decreased since 
children's courts were instituted, we see municipal councils 
start what is called a ^'cleaning day." Americans, who 
used to spit freely, have dropped the habit. When they 
travel in Europe, they avoid badly kept towns and evil- 
smelling hotels, and this is one of the reasons why many of 
them prefer Switzerland and Germany to France and Italy. 
Let us take warning. It is not enough to shout ^^vive la 
France^ \- we must also keep our homeland swept and 
garnished. The American children I have seen at work 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 295 

submit to discipline and pull together admirably. The 
grown-ups, who did not manage to set them a good example, 
have none the less made up their minds to follow in their 
footsteps, and the result is that we see all sorts of irresis- 
tibly convincing demonstrations — mass meetings of 40,000 
children, boys and girls, marching through the streets and 
displaying such placards as ''We want clean streets" and 
"We want a well-kept city." At school, the pupils enter into 
pledges, some of which I should Kke to quote in full. One 
is : "I promise never to destroy a tree, a shrub or a bird."^ 
As will readily be supposed, American women are by no 
means hostile to this education of childhood. Here again, 
and with especial clearness, they reahze that their own future 
is involved, inasmuch as the education of fathers, husbands 
and brothers brings domestic happiness with it. They 
themselves need organization, and, as we have seen, they 
do not fail in this respect. In addition to all the leagues 
for municipal improvement which I have mentioned — 

1 See the interesting illustrated works by G. Benoit-Levy on city-plan- 
ning questions, such as "La Ville Modele," "Garden City," " Banlieues- 
Jardins et Villages- Jardins," " Cites- Jardins d'Amerique," "Le Roman des 
Cit6s-Jardins," " L'Enfant des Cites- Jardins," " La Ville et son Image " 
and "La Formation de la Race." Paris, 167 Rue Montmartre: Cites- 
Jardins de France publications. See also " La Science du Bonheur," by 
Jean Finot, and Montenac's works on " L'Esthetique Urbaine et Villageoise," 
"La Serie Verte," " Sur la Pelouse," " L'Eau," "L'Arbre" and "Ouvrons 
les Yeux." Among works in English, see " To-Morrow," by E. Howard, 
" The City-Garden Bible" and " Town Planning in Practice," by R. Unwin 
(a masterly illustrated book) and the works of Mrs. C. W. Earle, that 
generous pioneer to whom I feel a constant gratitude that I shall never be 
able to acknowledge sufficiently. In the United States see also various ex- 
cellent illustrated reviews, such as The American City, Good Health, Park and 
Cemetery and The Municipal Journal, not forgetting the standard illustrated 
works by Charles Mulford Robinson. Those fine illustrated books by an 
English pioneer, W. Robinson — "The English Flower Garden," "The 
Garden Beautiful," "The Vegetable Garden," "The Wild Garden" and 
" God's Acre Beautiful, or the Cemetery of the Future." 

See also the recently published books (splendidly illustrated with color 
photographs) by Willy Langen, head of the Berlin Botanical Garden, and 
Otto Stahn, "The Formation of Gardens," etc. 



296 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and I ought to have included the American Civic Associa- 
tion, the Emerson Union for Ideal Culture, and such bene- 
factors as Pierpont Morgan, Harriman and many others 
who have enriched their country with parks, forests and 
open spaces — there are more than 700 associations of 
women for city beautifying all over the country. If the 
municipal government objects, they get another elected in- 
stead. They proceed in the same way for food inspection 
and education. They provide for kindergartens and see 
that workshops and pubHc places are decorated with flowers. 
They handle the broom themselves, as do the children, and 
tell them to show their parents how to use this implement. 
They remind the tradesmen that a well-kept town means 
money in its inhabitants' pockets. 

It is, therefore, not surprising to find traces of this healthy 
national movement in the Federal capital ; but, having dis- 
covered the causes, I must admit that I am filled with 
wonder at the sight of the effects, and by the discovery that 
every one who admires these effects is free to profit by them. 

I should never finish if I went on enumerating all the 
signs of the really impressive American effort to make 
Washington what L'Enfant intended it to be, and what it 
deserves to be. I must nevertheless say a word about the 
park I visited, the pilgrimage to Mount Vernon (which 
ought to be made by every French traveler in the States 
after Lafayette), the art of landscape gardening for the 
people, and finally the White House, so rich in personal 
recollections for me and in hope for the world's peace. 

4. Washington's Park 

Rock Creek Park is a bit of Nature preserved for man. 
It is one of those large expanses of virgin ground that the 
Americans used to devastate mercilessly but are now treat- 
ing with respect and beginning to preserve. *' What I see, " 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 297 

wrote Tocqueville on May 20, 183 1, in his notes on his 
journey to New York, '^rouses no enthusiasm in me, be- 
cause more is due to the nature of things than to human 
effort." Rock Creek Park, however, redeems the national 
reputation. A very wide and well-kept road winds its way, 
up hill and down dale, past wooded cliffs and majestic rocks. 
A mountain torrent, the Rock Creek, is allowed to cross and 
recross the road, and automobiles and horses must ford its 
pellucid waters. There could be no better appeal to the 
childish imagination than cycling, or rather walking, 
through this wild solitude near the gates of a great city, and 
no better rest cure for the brain worker. It is a great 
resource for town dwellers, who are thus able to go back — 
in the most comfortable way, too — to the simple life ; it is 
a splendid cure for nervous complaints, and a fine stimulus to 
life and action. 

Trees and Birds 

It is very sweet, too, for the traveler from abroad 
to find himself in the company of the trees he knows, 
in the familiar surroundings of things that do not 
change, of human things that are more or less alike 
in all countries, just as the sky is the same everywhere. 
There is an endless variety of maple trees here, ranging 
from the sycamore maple to the kind that provides a sirupy 
substitute for honey. Here is a giant ash with buds just 
opening; here are various kinds of oaks, all solemn and 
slow to respond to spring, just as they are in our own coun- 
try ; here are the elm, the ash and the lithe, wiry acacia 
growing on the edge of the ditches, the witch elm that 
looks like the beech, the white birch quivering in the morn- 
ing breeze, the aspen, the silver willow and the big walnut 
tree growing near his brother the chestnut tree, just as he 
does in France. At their feet are the same arborescent 
ferns ; among the moss are the same forest flowers — the 



298 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

primrose, the periwinkle, the violet, the narcissus, the lily 
of the valley, the wild hyacinth, the asphodel, and, right 
on the edge of the wood, the anemone, the buttercup, the 
dandelion and the daisy. In front of a velvety curtain of 
fir trees I see larches, blue cedars and black Canadian 
pines. On the slope of a hillock, still covered with the 
dead leaves of autumn, wave the blossoming branches of 
leafless trees and shrubs : the laburnum, the Judas tree, a 
few lilac trees, pear trees, wild apple trees, cherry trees 
and peach trees in company with the barberry and all 
sorts of hawthorns. Along the roads, where they were no 
doubt purposely placed, a few magnolias, forsythias with 
their brilliant yellows, vivacious azaleas, wild laurels, 
mahonias and rose trees spring up here and there as if 
through some caprice of Nature, not to mention the syringa 
with its white bouquets and the spirea with its snowballs. 
Among the rocks, the glistening holly points its spikes at 
the sun. The curtains of ivy and even the dark foliage of 
the box tree seem to reflect light. Further on is a for- 
ester's house, almost hidden under glycina, honeysuckle, 
jasmine already in flower, vines with their red, trumpet- 
shaped blossoms and Japanese wisteria. But the queen 
of these American woods is the leafless flower of the dog- 
wood — white, mauve or pink — whose petals, spread out 
like wings, suggest so many swarms of butterflies. The 
cornel tree, which I am told is the French dogwood, does 
not hold pride of place with us ; but here every wood and 
park has its dogwood. This shrub, covered with flowers 
that look as if they were flying, simply enchants the eye. 
These delightful abodes of solitude are inhabited by 
swarms of tame or only half-wild creatures. Buffaloes, 
deer and squirrels live at peace with peacocks, pigeons, 
swans and a multitude of song birds. In France we exter- 
minate our birds, and our "Tartarins" practice their 
shooting on little warblers. The same kind of thing, and 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 299 

even worse, was done here for a long time, but a reaction 
has set in against such barbarity. Leagues for the protec- 
tion of birds have been started; private initiative (as 
in the case of Mrs. Sage at Marsh Island, for instance) 
has helped to effect reform ; parks have been set aside by 
Congress, states and towns; and birds, like trees and 
flowers, have regained their title to existence. They cer- 
tainly take full advantage of it. The American landscape 
gains inestimably by the qualities of motion, life, color 
and music imparted to it by birds, without counting their 
usefulness in an almost tropical country, where insects are 
man's enemies. The blackbird seems to be especially 
popular here. His feathers are surprisingly fine. He is 
always smart. In the St. Louis district he shines as if he 
were varnished, and his wardrobe is of the richest kind. 
The white variety is not to be found, but I have seen some 
blackbirds with blue heads, others with yellow^ heads, with 
white and red shoulders, and with red wings. They as- 
tonish one by shooting like arrows of light through the 
woods, accompanying their flight by outbursts of song, with 
even greater variety than the morning hues of the forest. 
This early serenade is taken up by an innumerable or- 
chestra and is the prelude to a concert of vocal flourishes, 
trills and runs, to which a note of irony is added by the 
voice of the magpie, the oriole and the mocking bird. The 
big redbreast or robin answers the chaffinch — golden 
brown, lapis-lazuH blue or scarlet. The Kentucky car- 
dinal flits by, resplendent in dazzHng color. The humming 
bird with red or vermilion back is often seen, and so are the 
ruby-tinted tanager and the bluebird. 

The Bluebird and the Eagle 

Here the bluebird is not a mere creature of the imagi- 
nation. It is to be found all over the United States, and 



300 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

might be used as a symbol by some society with an ideal. 
I have always been sorry that the United States chose the 
eagle as their symbol. They had the stars that spangle 
their banner, and they had the oak. The case called for 
something new. The Gauls, who were warlike enough for 
any one, selected the lark, and the Roman eagle was cast 
down by the barbarians. The eagle is dying out, and ought 
to die out, like the brigand in civilized nature. It is nothing 
but an anachronism in the armorial bearings of a democracy. 
I admit that it is a reminder of the defeat inflicted on the 
British lion, but it is none the less much more emblematical 
of oppression than independence and is an out-of-date 
symbol. As Michelet said: ''The eagle is dethroned," 
and he ought to be still more so in the United States than 
elsewhere. The cultivation of delight in existence, of 
which I see signs everywhere in the United States, is in- 
compatible with the lust for destruction. I am grateful 
to American public spirit, because it saved the bluebird 
for us. 



5. The Art of Gardening. Internationalized and 
Democratized 

I was stopped by some friendly gardens on my way back 
from the park. Progress in the art of gardening is a fairly 
correct gauge of the progress in civilization, and this form 
of progress has been as rapid as any other in the United 
States. Gardening is preeminently one of the arts of 
peace. In France it has suffered from the storms that 
have assailed us in the course of our history, and the women 
of the last generation had to plant flowers oftener in ceme- 
teries than in gardens ; but the art is undergoing a general 
revival, and every one wants to grow flowers. In the United 
States the same causes produce the same effects, and horti- 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 3OI 

culture has become democratic. Herein is a great change. 
We still see the gardens that were laid out for kings and 
princes and for the patrons of art who imitated and out- 
stripped them. Seeing things as they do, on a large scale, 
Americans could not help reverting to the France of Louis 
XIV's period. Never have the parks at Fontainebleau, 
Vaux, Compiegne, St. Cloud and Chantilly, and many 
others, been so much in favor as now in America. The new 
generations are fervent admirers of ''the gardens of intel- 
ligence," the ''poet's garden" and the " secret garden " ; but 
they are not satisfied with admiring ; they want a new kind 
of garden — a garden for themselves and for everybody. 
The garden that Voltaire advised Candide to cultivate at the 
end of the eighteenth century (it has since been called the 
"rectory garden," and even the humblest among us long 
for one) has become a reality in the United States — a 
reality enriched, if not enlarged, by infinite inheritance 
from the past and the discoveries of indefatigable florists 
in every country, especially Japan. It has become the op- 
posite of the costly garden, walled in on all sides and arous- 
ing no feeling except that of inequality in the passer-by, 
and implying that all is for one, and nothing for the rest. 
Here it is a pleasure to the pubhc eye. It decorates streets, 
roads and the landscape in general. Instead of envy, it 
suggests emulation and the desire to build up a home, a 
family and a country. The garden is a pleasant smile, 
an encouragement to the living, and a color symphony that 
is just as good for the education of people as a musical 
symphony. The art of gardening in the United States has 
become not only democratic but international. Traces of 
English, German (Kindergarten), French and other forms 
of progress are to be found in the gardens of the United 
States. Here the garden has become a need, because it 
forms part of a system of architecture in process of 
creation. 



302 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Cheap Horticulture 

A friend of mine summed up the situation thus : '* A few 
less wreaths for the dead and a few more flowers for the 
living.'' But gardening must be made cheap if it is to be 
put within reach of the masses. The modern formula is : 
"More pleasure for less trouble and less cost." The garden 
must be simplified. ''We want a home and not a mu- 
seum." This end has been attained by reducing the use of 
annuals, such as the geranium, and replacing them by vig- 
orous herbaceous plants properly grouped together. In 
this way the English have produced masterpieces of sim- 
plicity to go with a brick wall or border a walk. The 
Americans are in no way behindhand. They either divide 
their garden into three parts, so that each one is in flower 
at a different season, or arrange their plants so that fresh 
flowers automatically take the place of those that are over. 
In this way their spring gardens last, according to latitude 
and climate, from the beginning of May to the end of June, 
and then change into summer and autumn gardens. Every 
one turns out to see the various blossoms when they are 
at their best. There is lilac Sunday, rhododendron and 
azalea Sunday, and a Sunday for roses, dahlias and chrysan- 
themums. These displays of flowers, however, are a 
superfluous luxury, according to those who cultivate them. 
The most important part of the garden consists of the grass 
and leaves, and not of the flowers. The object of the 
flower is to please and amuse the eye, while verdure rests 
it. Let us therefore, they say, observe, a due sense of 
proportion. Every well-designed American garden com- 
prises a turfed center, a grass walk and clumps of shrubs 
and trees with some kind of building in the background. 
Fruit trees are freely used for these clumps of verdure, 
notably the cherry tree or double-flowered malus — quite 
a burning bush, a floral expression of enthusiasm, giving 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 303 

mankind beauty instead of fruit. Ndn-flowering shrubs 
are also appreciated, and their variety of foliage, hitherto 
left too much to the decoration of large parks, produces 
astonishing results. They are more like bouquets of leaves 
than shrubs, and they are bouquets that change color with 
the seasons. Some Japanese maples are green in the spring 
and red in autumn or inversely. Others are coppery, 
bronzed or silvered, or show all sorts of tints. Much in- 
genuity and foresight are exhibited in imparting variety 
to all these settings. It is quite a science to design an 
avenue. In Europe we say "a landscape is a state of 
mind," but here the answer would be that a cheerful land- 
scape can change the color of our thoughts, and gardens 
are a means to this end. I experience a sensation of calm 
serenity, as if I were reconciled to life, when I see before 
me a stretch of closely mown, green turf bordered by plants 
bedded up in lines, one above the other. Many-colored 
irises are in front, with the long-stalked tulips, and the 
narcissi here and there Kfting their starry white heads. 
Leaning over them are the branches of lilac bending un- 
der their weight of blossom, or the tree-like peony, or 
the poetical hawthorn. Standing still higher than these 
medium-sized shrubs are the Judas tree, the laburnum and 
the tamarind. 

We must beware of fostering our European delusion that 
all our artists have to do is to produce if they want buyers 
in the United States. A change is going on. Natural 
taste is in process of formation in America, while its purity 
is endangered among us by official patronage and by dis- 
regard of order and cleanliness. A nation that seeks for 
beauty, and always finds a place for it in Nature, in cities 
and in houses, will soon stop living on borrowed capital. 
It will produce its own artists. It has already had a 
Whistler, a Sargent; I know some others, and one of 
these days they will begin to export ! 



304 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

6. Mount Vernon and the White House 

I have lingered over the gardens of Washington, in 
addition to having already dealt with many other American 
cities, although I ought to say something about Baltimore 
and Pittsburgh parks, the country around New York, Boston, 
Lake Mohonk, Newport, New Hampshire, and the state of 
Vermont. The reason is that Washington sums up all the rest. 
What I might have taken elsewhere for an exceptional and 
privileged condition is common to the whole country, and is 
in itself an explanation of that country. Every one of these 
millions of gardens constitutes the framework, as it were, 
of a home and a family. Society in America is quite a new 
institution made up of emigrants unknown to one another, 
and these elements have become fused together by a com- 
mon desire for comfort. A middle class has been created 
in the United States. Side by side with very rich houses, 
which help to educate the pubHc taste, an immense number 
of small American families, starting from nothing, have 
estabHshed themselves and, having taken root, are already 
acting as a stimulus to the working class. American so- 
ciety, in spite of the boundless luxury of its aristocracy, 
thus remains democratic, and its organization is based on 
the principle of adhering to the traditions that have served 
it so well, — those of its founders. 

Simple Life 

These traditions have been kept ahve at Mount Vernon, 
which I will refrain from describing after so many others 
have undertaken the task. Mount Vernon is more than a 
home; it is the cradle of all American homes. It is a 
glorification of the struggle for independence, and a per- 
manent exhibition of the American sense of duty, as well 
as a tribute to the simple, family hfe. When going through 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 305 

its rooms, kept up with pious care by an association of 
American women, the thought of General Washington is in- 
separable from that of his wife, Martha Washington. They 
are buried in the same tomb. Trees have been planted in 
the garden in memory of the friends who gathered round 
this home. Lafayette's magnolia still stands on a lawn, 
in the society of birds and flowers. MiUions of Americans 
come here every year. It is their way of making a pilgrim- 
age, and they return home full of the spirit that has made 
them what they are. This spirit is still to be found at the 
White House. It has been transmitted from Washington 
and Jefferson to other great Presidents, such as Madison, 
Monroe, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland and McKinley, and it 
would be a pubKc scandal if their successors failed to live 
up to them. The President, elected by the whole people 
to succeed such men, is expected to be worthy of the country 
and its past. But the country is simple, just as its past 
has been. There is a great and inevitable difference be- 
tween entering the palace of the President of the French 
Republic at the Elysee and paying a visit to the White 
House — the difference between a Napoleonic palace and a 
house, or between a public building and a home. The 
White House is Mount Vernon on a larger scale. 

A City of Gratitude 

The city of Washington has remained, and will long re- 
main, it is to be hoped, a city of gratitude. Everything 
contributes to this impression. Lafayette Square, with 
its two fine monuments to Lafayette and Rochambeau, 
facing the White House and keeping it company, is the 
most touching tribute a nation could render to its liberators. 
Many American children used to believe that Lafayette 
and Washington were twins, because they heard the two 
names so constantly associated. This enthusiastic grati- 



3o6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

tude has something juvenile about it, Hke the impulsiveness 
of a happy child. 

My Visits to the White House 

I have always been cordially received at the White 
House, both as a visitor and as a friend, in 1902, 1907, 191 1 
and 191 2. There I have met two very different Presidents, 
who have since become bitter opponents, Mr. Roosevelt 
and Mr. Taft. They are aHke in one respect, however, — 
simplicity and attachment to family life. Here I may 
remark, in parenthesis, that even in France I have never 
seen more united families than in America. I hope Mr. 
Roosevelt and Mr. Taft will forgive me if I say that, in spite 
of their poKtical battles, their reception of me impressed 
me with their great kindness and readiness to help. I 
might go still further and say that, if President Roosevelt 
had not killed so many Hons, bears, elephants and rhinocer- 
oses, he would be equaled only by Rudyard Kipling in his love 
for animals, and especially for birds, whose ways and song 
he knows very well. As every one will readily understand, 
I had to be strictly neutral in the open warfare that raged 
between the two candidates during my last journey. This 
did not prevent me from regretting that the war was waged 
with so much energy, but an American in whom I have 
confidence reassured me by telling me that, once the elec- 
tion over, no further sign of it would be seen; that the 
temporary disturbance in the country would prove to be a 
good thing, because it occupied pubhc attention and com- 
pelled every citizen, man, woman and child, to take an 
interest in such an essential function of the national exist- 
ence. We certainly, I repKed, take it much more quietly 
in France, where the perfect machinery of our Congress 
enables us to select the President of our RepubUc in a few 
hours. 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 307 

President Roosevelt and the Hague Court 

It is also a fact that the President of the United States can 
do a great deal of harm or a great deal of good during his 
four years of office, and this is why my first visit was made 
to the White House in 1 902 . I came, with the consent of my 
American colleagues and friends, Andrew D. White, Seth 
Low, Frederick W. Holls and Nicholas Murray Butler, to 
make an appeal to the President's power of initiative against 
the force of inertia exerted by European governments. The 
manner in which this unusual step was received is so good 
an instance of the services the United States can render 
the world, that I should not be justified in passing over it 
now. I can remember almost every word of the address 
I delivered in support of my cause. "Europe," I said to 
President Roosevelt (in the presence of that distinguished 
ambassador, Jules Cambon, who took no exception to my 
remarks), "is watching you closely. Liberal opinion in 
Europe has no leader, now that Gambetta and Gladstone 
are dead. You will be either a cause for great expectations 
or a great source of danger, according to whether you act 
on the side of justice or of brute force." Here the Presi- 
dent broke in by warmly asserting his attachment to peace. 
"You can afhrm that attachment," I continued, "by an 
act which will earn you and your country the gratitude of 
the whole world. You can show Europe the path of peace 
and lead her on it." 

I then explained what I had been explaining in vain for 
the past three years in Europe — the work of the first Peace 
Congress at The Hague. It accomplished more than any 
one could have hoped, but was regarded as abortive by a 
skeptical diplomatic world. I laid stress on the practical 
usefulness of the agreement for the peaceful settlement of 
international conflicts and on the services that might be 
rendered by the new arbitration court if only it were utiHzed ; 



3o8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

but no one was willing to use it, and no one would believe 
in it or give it a trial. 

''Have this boycotting stopped," I urged; ''let your 
side of the Atlantic set an example of the confidence we do 
not possess in Europe. Cross the ocean to appeal to a 
court that is practically next door to us. Like all govern- 
ments, your State Department keeps among its archives 
the papers relating to a dozen or so of international dis- 
putes that have been pending for years. Such permanent 
differences embitter the relations of the countries concerned, 
paralyze all attempts at conciHation and maintain a state 
of antagonism without any real cause. Take one of these 
questions, it does not matter which, submit it openly to 
arbitration, and you will save the Hague tribunal." 

I should have been more than ungrateful if I had not paid 
due tribute to President Roosevelt for the frankness and 
promptitude with which he acceded to my request. "Go 
and see the secretary of state, Mr. John Hay," he said, 
"and use my name. He will do whatever can be done." 
I did not fail to take this advice,^ and we went to see Mr. 
Hay at once. I found him animated by a soul that needed 
no awakening and had long been devoted to the service of 
just causes. A month afterward, April 7, 1902, M. Jules 
Cambon wrote officially to the Minister of Foreign Affairs 
in Paris that the government of the United States and its 
neighbor Mexico had decided to submit the question of the 
" pious funds " of the Cahf ornias to the Hague tribunal. The 
hint was understood, and I took it upon myself to see that 
due importance was attached to it in Europe. The es- 
tablishment of the arbitration group in the French par- 
liament dates from this period. European governments 
were able to ignore the new jurisdiction so long as no one 
took any notice of it, but when it attracted litigants from 

1 See the twelfth installment of "Chapters of a Possible Autobiography," 
by Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook, Dec. 27, 1913, p. 921. 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 309 

the New World, and when America herself intrusted her 
cause to a court sitting in Europe, the situation was com- 
pletely altered. Moreover, other support, also of a very 
influential nature, — I am proud of having helped to obtain 
it, with the assistance of my colleague and friend. General 
Porter, — was forthcoming for the Hague tribunal. When 
the various governments decided to recognize it, but could 
not make up their minds to build a courthouse for it or 
even to buy one, Andrew Carnegie undertook to provide 
it with a palace. Europe did not hesitate to accept this 
magnificent present, learn the lesson it implied and follow 
the example. Since that time, the Hague Convention, 
though unable to prevent all wars (which nobody expected), 
has nevertheless succeeded in bringing about the amicable 
settlement of serious conflicts such as the Doggerbank and 
Casablanca questions, not to mention others, which would 
have been quite enough to start a general war and furnish a 
source of perpetual conflict for the future. It may also 
be that the surprise caused by the ease with which these 
matters were adjusted gave the countries concerned an 
impetus towards still more difficult understandings. If 
this is the case, M. Jules Cambon, our ambassador in Berlin, 
had no cause to regret, when he signed the Franco- German 
Convention of Nov. 4, 191 1, referred to above (stipulating 
that any difficulties which might arise between the two 
governments in regard to the interpretation of the conven- 
tion should be submitted to the Hague tribunal), the assist- 
ance he gave to the movement started in Washington ten 
years earlier. 

Mr. Taft and Arbitration Treaties 

Mr. Taft, supported by Elihu Root, quite the type of the 
practical American idealist statesman, has shown himself 
just as much in favor of the policy of arbitration as his 



3IO AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

predecessor was. Mr. Taft even went too far, when Secre- 
tary of State Knox was the successor of Elihu Root, when he 
signed general treaties of compulsory and unrestricted arbi- 
tration with France and Great Britain. If he did not go too 
far, he went too fast at any rate. He responded to the general 
sentiment of the United States, but he outstripped Con- 
gress. He understood his country better than its parlia- 
ment. The fact is that parliaments act in close sympathy 
with the influences to which they owe their election and 
not out of regard for aspirations after some future state of 
things. Parliaments even counteract such aspirations 
until the latter are brought to their notice by the electors. 
Admitting that Mr. Taft had succeeded in more or less 
taking Congress by surprise and inducing it to pass his 
treaties, could he answer for their not being repudiated if 
arbitration went against the United States and the finding 
had to be carried into effect? It was better to fail than to 
run the risk of such a setback, which would have been 
nothing less than scandalous. 

The White House as Battle Field 

The White House will always be the battle ground of 
forces that are difficult to bring into harmony, such as 
public sentiment, which is often complex, and the atmos- 
phere of society and ofiicialism. Public sentiment pre- 
vailed in the instance I have just quoted, but will this 
always be the case? I believe it will, on condition that 
this sentiment does not deteriorate for want of definite 
guidance. "How long will your Republic last?" M. 
Guizot once asked the poet Lowell. The latter replied : 
"As long as the ideas of the men who founded it." 

The White House will have hard work to defend itself. 
It is steeped in an atmosphere of officials, in addition to a 
great number of retired military and naval officers. The 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 3II 

diplomatic corps has its influence on the social circles, not 
all of which are imbued with the traditions of Mount 
Vernon. I have seen some very bad cosmopohtan habits 
try to graft themselves on to the independent ways of 
America. 

Capital or Court of a Democracy? 

All this kind of thing affects the moral atmosphere of a 
city. Just as the American society woman and her bril- 
liant surroundings already constitute the aristocracy of 
the country, so the Federal city, made up as it is, may 
easily become a small court instead of a great capital: 
the court of a democracy ! In this event, how much will 
be left of the spirit of Mount Vernon? What hope will 
remain for European thought? What will become of the 
germs of independence sown by the founders of the United 

States ? 

Chateaubriand defined General Washington's immense 
achievement in his celebrated comparison with the life 
work of Napoleon I. '^Look at the forests in which Wash- 
ington's sword flashed, and what do you find there? 
Graves? No; a world. Washington left the United 
States as a trophy on his battle field." 

The world referred to by Chateaubriand now exceeds, 
in extent, population and wealth, anything that its founders 
could possibly have expected it to attain in so brief a period, 
and its fate will virtually be decided in this city. I have 
never better realized what was the mission of the New World 
and the duty of America. The material progress achieved 
has surpassed aU expectations, but unless moral progress 
keeps it close company, the whole fabric will be in danger. 
Americans fully appreciate this, and, consequently, they 
are bringing their efforts to bear on all sides of the question 
at the same time — on political and economic programs, 
education and religion. American idealists do not say 



312 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

SO, but their duty, I believe, is to regenerate the 
Old World by giving it the program of government 
which at present it does not possess — the program, 
not of a party, but of an epoch, the program which 
ambitious calculations can modify only in detail, which 
corresponds to the permanent interests of a country and 
therefore ought to be known to every one and carried 
out automatically with the cooperation of every one. In 
reality, this program would be the same everywhere as 
regards its main principles; and a great service would be 
rendered to the cause of peace by simplifying these prin- 
ciples to such an extent that they would become generally 
evident. The same process might be followed with re- 
ligion. Europe is trying hard to preserve religions that 
are falHng into disuse, like everything else. Would not 
the United States accompHsh the highest kind of social 
function between the Far East and Europe by seek- 
ing after a religion of conciliation — a new religion that 
would shut no one out from participation in its higher 
humanity ? 

Is it asking too much of the United States to expect 
such services from it? No. Let us adapt them to its size 
and age. The New World owes a debt to us Europeans who, 
for five centuries, have peopled it with our children and 
enriched it with our heroism. In return for these, it ought 
to give us an ideal and an object ; its duty is to be a revival 
and not a copy of Europe. If the government of the 
United States tried to evade payment of this debt and the 
accompHshment of this filial, national and world-wide 
duty, it would be partly responsible for a colossal disap- 
pointment and would be utterly untrue to itself. No ; it 
can no longer arrest its progress, neither can it turn back. 
It will not allow the signatures and pledges of the heroes 
whose testamentary executors it is, to be dishonored. It 
will not extinguish the blazing torch placed in its hand. 



THE SPRINGTIME OF A NATION 313 

The Eagle or the Star? 

The foregoing causes for uneasiness presented themselves 
to my mind on the very first day of my acquaintance with 
Washington society, and again ten years later, even in the 
charming surroundings of its gardens. All this prosperity 
and luxury are a good sign, as I have said, and an evidence 
of progress, but there is also the danger of a state of exist- 
ence surrounded with comforts — the temptation to fall 
in with a system that is more selfish than generous and is 
based on the principle of every one for himself and the gov- 
ernment for all. It is therefore probable that the govern- 
ment will be more and more left to itself and will conse- 
quently have to keep abreast of the constantly increasing 
difficulty of its task. As I draw farther and farther away 
from Washington, I see the symbolical eagle stand out 
more and more clearly on the sky of the United States, and 
it often seems to me that the Americans have two entirely 
different destinies before them, each represented by one 
of their chosen emblems. The one, precondemned and 
intolerable to the modern world, is domination, represented 
by the eagle ; the other, eternal and beneficent, is guidance, 
embodied by the star. 

The American people have instinctively chosen the 
nobler and the safer part, but will not the government 
often be tempted to be unfaithful to it? 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 

Everything for the Future: Education. Nation-building. — 
I. Freedom of Instruction: Generalization Impossible. 
Educational establishments. Margaret Morrison School, Domes- 
tic economy. The dietitian. German teachers of French. One of 
the results of our wars. "E pluribus unum." The leaders of 
pubHc spirit. Trustees. Lafayette College. Columbia Univer- 
sity. Harvard. Yale. Princeton. Coeducation. Vassar College. 
Girls' Normal College in New York. Meeting of school children. 
The protection of youth. The Sorbonne and the Boulevard St. 
Michel. The Church as a school. Toleration at the universities. 
Freedom for educators. — 2. Lake Mohonk: the Brothers 
Smiley. The lake cure. Debating great ideas. Supporting great 
causes. — 3. The Education of Political Parties. PoUtical 
classifications. Misleading names. The dissatisfied. The center 
between the two wings. Progressives and Socialists. Comparative 
weakness of Socialism. — 4. The Indians : American Impatience. 
History of colonization. French and English. Spaniards and Puri- 
tans. Prairie Caesars. — 5. The Negroes: the Inevitable Day 
of Reckoning. The slave trade. The war of secession. Negroes 
liberated but not made citizens. Mingling of races. Unassimi- 
lated population. The negro in a white democracy. Injustice to 
be confirmed or atoned for. Americans have faith. — 6. Religion : 
Is it dying out or becoming modernized ? Competition in 
well-doing. Religion of good. Christian Scientists. Mrs. 
Mary Baker Eddy. People who imagine themselves sick. 
Mind cures. The Scientists' newspaper. Their Mother Church in 
Boston. Union of Religions: the spirit of the French revolu- 
tion. The pioneer of pioneers. Sentiment and reason. Indif- 
ference to dogma. The Unitarians. Man's duties. Rival gods. 
Morality common to all. Back to the real Christian spirit. 
Phillips Brooks. The religion of the future. American women and 
secularization in France. — 7. Civic and Philanthropic Works : 

314 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 315 

THE Presbyterian Church at Seattle. Pastor Matthews. 
Andrew Carnegie. Dunfermline. Edwin Ginn. Scientific manage- 
ment. American Museums. A model farm. — 8. Children : Teach- 
ing THEM HOW TO PlAY : THEIR NeED FOR LiFE, SpACE, CHEER- 
FULNESS, Light, Nature and Especially Quiet. Playground 
Associations. Tadpoles. Imitation war. Bonfires. Excursions. 
John Brashear. Doing the honors of the sky. Libraries. John 
Bigelow. The pageant. The light of truth. The Christian 
command. 

Public Spirit 

The difference between a government with retrograde 
tendencies and a constantly progressive country would be 
all the greater in view of the fact that the whole of the 
United States is impelled by a great idealistic movement. 
The more it is felt to be necessary, and the more obstacles 
it encounters, the more pronounced it becomes. We are 
not concerned with knowing whether the population of the 
United States contains bad elements as well as good ones, 
or whether a traveler from Europe, more or less lost in such 
a new sphere, hits upon the worst part of it, like an Ameri- 
can on the Paris boulevards, or whether, from the top to 
the bottom of the social ladder, he meets men and women 
who are irresponsible or hypocritical or cynical, or even 
monsters, for these are to be found in the United States 
just as in other countries. What we want to know is 
whether the United States possesses a public spirit that 
strives to master these monsters and prevent them from 
doing harm. 

As a matter of fact, this public spirit exists in a very high 
degree. It is progressing, it is becoming organized, and its 
influence is being exerted in all directions. Whether we 
call it the instinct of self-preservation, patriotism or ideal- 
ism — the term is of little consequence — it constitutes a 
very great moral force, at the service of the United States, 
first of all, and of civilization afterward. It exists in every 



3l6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

State and every town, and, more or less, in every household, 
rich or poor. I will even include the richest, in which the 
rentier, as we call him in France, is unknown, the idle and 
selfish find no sympathy, and every one, carried on by his 
own momentum and constitutionally unable to rest, must 
go on, whether he likes it or not, working and working, 
serving and dedicating himself to some cause. Perhaps 
our French pioneers bequeathed something of this sacred 
fire, so different from the impassibility or indolence of other 
nations. 

Now that I am back again in the Eastern states, which 
are more or less generally known, I shall no longer write 
in reference to my actual route. I have already gone over 
it backwards and forwards, and skipped from point to point. 
Now that I am reaching the closing stage of my journey, 
and of my book, I prefer to dwell, not on cities but on ob- 
servations and the ideas they have suggested to me. These 
ideas, weighed in the course of my various visits, have auto- 
matically developed into definite conclusions, if I may say 
so without appearing pretentious. 

Education. Nation Building 

The essential work of American public spirit can be ex- 
pressed in one word — education. The ideal of the Amer- 
ican man and the American woman is to instruct, en- 
lighten and guide the young, and through them the nation, 
towards good, by all possible means and regardless of cost. 
Everything is for the young and for the future. This is a 
spontaneous impulse still more general in the newer states 
than in the older. This impulse itself is the most eloquent 
example, because it is disinterested and because it is a proof 
of faith in the future of the country. How can young 
people and children fail, under such conditions, to aim 
high and to look straight ahead, and what confidence must 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 317 

be theirs, seeing that they are too few for the national 
needs, that they can choose any career and that their sense 
of personal responsibility develops in proportion to the 
services they are sure to render, knowing, as they do, that 
their coming is expected and that they are relied upon! 
The ambition to be useful, and to do one's duty twice, in- 
stead of once, among a people that has undertaken to fill a 
world, is rather different from the European youth's notion 
that his chief business is to find a comfortable place for 
himself. 

This determination to be useful I have constantly ob- 
served among the young all over America, and, through its 
very nature, it is carried to excess. Every young American 
considers himself indispensable and tells himself that he 
will help to make his country a very great one, the greatest 
of all, the finest, and so on. We know the American fond- 
ness for superlatives. It corresponds to a child's enthu- 
siasm. It is unbearable when it develops and degenerates 
into jingo vanity. This is the other side of the shield, but 
it is also a reason for not letting the rising generation grow 
up in ignorance of the world abroad. This is why Ameri- 
cans are ceasing to be absorbed in their immense labor of 
nation building and are looking abroad and summoning so 
many foreigners whom they accept as masters and who tell 
them of Europe, the past, art and nature, give them models 
and points of comparison and open out wide horizons to 
their view. This is why they allow the fullest liberty to 
the growth and multiplication of universities and colleges, 
schools, institutes, scholarships, foundations, lectureships, 
debating societies, addresses, congresses, exhibitions, labo- 
ratories, missions foreign and domestic, voyages, inquiries, 
statistics, libraries, churches, museums, playgrounds and 
concerts — in short the innumerable educational institu- 
tions, to give an exact idea of which we should need an 
encyclopedia. 



3l8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

I. Freedom of Education. Generalization Impossible 

The organization — or, to put it more correctly, the 
inevitable disorder — of education in the United States is 
puzzling to a Frenchman. An Englishman might see his 
way through it, but a Frenchman would be lost. It is 
like a half-built house, or a virgin forest of freely and 
spontaneously improvised institutions that have cropped 
up from time to time, without any general plan, to meet 
requirements as the various states came into being. But 
we must beware of assuming that, because there is a lack 
of order in the whole, the same condition prevails in the 
parts. Every one of these numerous free institutions op- 
erates under the superintendence and the constant and 
devoted control of the persons chiefly interested — fathers, 
mothers, sisters, brothers, former pupils, subscribers and 
good citizens. We need look no further for the explanation. 
This state of things is certainly not perfection, but it is 
genesis ; it is life. Individual initiative makes up for what 
is lacking in general management and experience. Initia- 
tive is further strengthened by emulation among states, 
cities and universities. I begin to wonder whether the 
great Federal university imagined by Washington (and 
marked on L'Enf ant's plan, no doubt in anticipation of 
its creation) with its influence over all the states, would 
not have ended by doing more harm than good and killing 
the germs of independence, originality and vigor in its 
satellites. I understand why the Americans will not have 
it. Their freedom of education, and all freedom of educa- 
tion, is possible only in a country in which there is no 
power able to profit by appropriating it. It is impossible 
in France. It is possible in England, where the Protestant 
and Catholic churches counterbalance each other. It is 
possible in a decentralized country. Oxford and Cambridge 
have done without the influence of London, and Heidel- 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 319 

berg, Gottingen and Bonn did not wait for Berlin. It has 
already been asked whether future ideaHsm, and conse- 
quently progress, in Germany will not suffer from Prussian 
predominance. 

In the United States we have to begin by forgetting that 
there is a state, and accustoming ourselves to the idea of 
federation, which is vague and abstract to the majority of 
Europeans. Only the credulous and ignorant can general- 
ize here. Let us try to imagine an American discussing 
Europe without stopping to distinguish between Naples 
and London, Paris and Moscow, Christiania and Con- 
stantinople. Every part of the United States is, not a 
province, but a country differing from the others in its 
climate, soil, produce, population and customs. The 
sudden introduction of railroads, telegraphs, newspapers 
and foreign immigration has already brought in a mass of 
assimilating innovations of more or less doubtful value. 
Is it desirable that education itself, which has hardly begun, 
should be modeled all over the continent on patterns im- 
ported from the East and from Europe ? 

Educational Establishments 

American educational establishments are more or less 
roughly divided into four general classes, not in accordance 
with the pupils' sex or the nature and extent of their studies, 
but with their age. The first object is to bring the number 
of ilhterates down to nothing. This is done with greater 
success than in France, although the work has to be carried 
out over the enormous extent of a continent which is com- 
paratively very thinly populated. From six to fourteen 
the children are at grammar school. Then comes the 
high school, where the pupil remains from fourteen to 
seventeen, and next the college, where the course usually 
covers four years, and finally the university, which is not 



320 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

always easy to distinguish from the college and where young 
men and girls follow a higher course and specialize, if need 
be, in science, letters, art, theology, law, medicine, phar- 
maceutical chemistry, dentistry, veterinary surgery, etc. 
I do not attempt to enumerate the thousands of technical 
and professional schools and colleges generously provided 
with laboratories, museums, libraries and model work- 
shops with the latest appliances ; neither do I include the 
special schools for agriculture, engineering, mechanics, 
architecture, etc. The Military School at West Point and 
the Naval School at Annapolis are well known, and 
there are, in the South, special schools (Tuskegee, for 
instance) for negroes. In all parts of the country 
there are excellent institutions for abnormal children. 
No large town is without its normal schools for girls 
and boys, because finding a sufiicient supply of teachers is 
one of the great difficulties in a new country. The pro- 
fessor and the teacher, both man and woman, are still, in 
many states, regular missionaries. They can also be very 
badly off, underpaid and thought very little of ; but if we 
want to judge the United States without prejudice, we must 
admit that all this education, spread very unequally over 
such a surface, and often into deserts, with a wretchedly small 
staff to begin with and more or less precarious means, has, in 
a very short space of time, produced results that promise 
well for the future and are already worthy of admiration. 
The Americans have looked everywhere for ideas. They 
have imitated the German kindergartens very successfully, 
with the addition of the largest possible number of play- 
grounds, swimming baths, parks, open spaces and enter- 
tainments for all classes of children. It all depends on the 
degree of initiative possessed by each state and city. The 
most advanced of them expend a great deal of care and 
imagination, which are even better than money, on this 
department of education. One institution they admire 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 32 1 

very much in France, the infant school {ecole maternelle), 
does not appear to thrive as well in their country as it does 
in ours ; the French mother cannot be exported. 

Margaret Morrison School 

On the other hand, I visited a very original technical 
school at Pittsburgh. It forms part of an admirable group 
of institutions — quite an educational town, founded by 
Andrew Carnegie, and containing, not only a colossal in- 
stitute like a museum, a library and a school of fine arts 
rolled into one, but four technical schools, three for boys 
and one for girls. This last, the Margaret Morrison school, 
dedicated by Andrew Carnegie to the memory of his mother, 
is intended to give women practical preparation for their 
mission in life ; and this mission is not a purely material 
one. The following inscription thus defines it : 

" To create and inspire the home, 
To decrease suffering and increase happiness, 
To assist humanity in its struggle to rise, 
To ennoble and adorn labor, however hiunble, 
This is the great object of woman." 

The pupils of this school are not taught merely the 
elements of a profession and what is necessary to enable 
them to fill a post, such as stenography, typewriting, book- 
keeping, secretarial work, business correspondence, arith- 
metic, modern languages, freehand and technical drawing, 
embroidery, sewing, dressmaking, everyday law, singing, 
gymnastics, washing, practical chemistry and hygiene; 
moral principles, the education of children, and deportment 
are taught as well, and special importance is attached to 
the art of keeping the home in good order. The Americans 
have reduced our principles to laws. They teach people 
how to choose a habitation, however small ; to know which 
way it should face, how the rooms can be used to the best 



322 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

advantage, and how it should be furnished, kept clean and 
made healthy ; in short, how to manage a household. 



Domestic Economy 

Every pupil learns what every good housewife ought to 
know, and I have observed that domestic economy, which 
is pecuharly a French science, is beginning to become gen- 
erally known in the United States, where the old-time house- 
wife, to whom our forefathers owed their good cooking, 
good cheer, good digestion and good humor, is in process of 
slow formation. The girls of the Margaret Morrison School 
have a whole set of rooms on which to practice. Each of 
them lives in it for a week in turn and plays the part of 
mistress of the house. Another acts as housemaid and a 
third as cook. The lady receives her friends, orders the 
meals, superintends the buying of the provisions, settles 
the accounts and has to keep her daily expenditure strictly 
within a fixed amount. She gives her friends Httle dinners ; 
the housemaid announces callers, serves at table, helps 
the cook wash the dishes, and so on until the end of the 
week, when the parts change hands, the lady going into 
the kitchen, the cook into the parlor, and then into the linen 
room and laundry, and so on. The most astonishing 
thing is that the girls all play their parts without laughing 
over them. Would this be possible in France? They all 
meet in the big room for gymnastics, singing and music, 
and in the laundry and workrooms, through which they 
all pass, taking turns in accordance with a very simple 
system which is sufficient to show what each one's capaci- 
ties are. 

The Dietitian 

Here is another detail that occurs to me. Many Ameri- 
cans, being overworked, and many of the women being very 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 323 

nervous, they cannot always thrive on ordinary plain cook- 
ing and must have special diet prescribed by the doctor : 
so many ounces of fat, so much lean meat , so much nitrogen, 
and so on, all carefully weighed out in the kitchen or pantry. 
A cook who confines her ambition to preparing good food 
cannot rise to these chemical analyses. In those houses 
in which the doctor reigns supreme she has to call in the 
assistance of a specialist, in virtue of the laws that regulate 
the division of labor. This personage, whose rank is diffi- 
cult to define and who is called the "dietitian," regulates 
what is to be eaten, drunk and avoided, draws up the bills 
of fare and sees that the doctor's orders are obeyed. This 
practice is sufficiently general in the United States for a 
school of future housewives to undertake the education of 
a certain number of young "dietitians" and make room 
for them in its chemical laboratory. These laboratories 
attract a great many students. Some are intended for the 
study of the everyday applications of chemistry to house- 
hold questions, the investigation of various kinds of food, 
their composition and their nutritive properties. The 
others are designed for finding out the best kinds of nourish- 
ment for a new-born baby, a child, an adult, an invalid or 
a healthy subject, or for detecting adulteration. 

The need creates the function. Manufacturers or farm- 
ers, who produce, for instance, oil, cotton, copper or 
fruit, find difficulty in procuring enough help in their fac- 
tories or farms. Needing specially trained workers, and 
being tired of looking for them elsewhere, they make up 
their minds to produce what they want on the spot. It is 
quite a simple matter. They request the nearest uni- 
versity to supply the required course of instruction. They 
procure, if necessary, the proper teachers, and provide occu- 
pation and a future for their pupils. Other employers, who 
want to develop international connections, inquire for young 
men and women who can speak German, Spanish or French 



324 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and know something about foreign usages. The outcome 
is another series of foundations, lectures and results, ac- 
cording to the needs of the case. 

One of the Results of our Wars. German Teachers of 

French 

Thus it is that Germans, who are superabundant in their 
own country, and are ready to go abroad, have flocked to 
American universities in hundreds of thousands ; and yet 
French travelers complain of American partiaHty and pref- 
erence for things German ! It is much easier to cry out 
than to think. In France we are only just beginning to 
pay for our mihtary glory. The first result of the wars in 
the days of Louis XV and Napoleon I was that we had to 
give up our pioneers' conquests to our foreign rivals. The 
wellspring of French influence and propagation reduced 
its outflow proportionately. Our population, which re- 
mained stationary while that of our neighbors doubled, has 
now become barely sufficient for the increasing needs of 
our public departments and our internal affairs. Never- 
theless it supplied an unexpectedly large contingent for 
our new colonial possessions in Africa and Asia, but we 
cannot get enough school teachers, even for ourselves ! 
And yet we complain because Americans turn to the Ger- 
mans, and we are surprised to find Tunis peopled by Itafians 
and Morocco by Spaniards ! The truth is that we cannot 
find even a children's nurse who will consent to go abroad. 
We have to bring them from Switzerland and Germany for 
our own families. The truth is that French teachers are 
wanted in all parts of the United States, so long as they 
fulfill requirements. In vain has Johns Hopkins applied 
for our agreges (holders of the highest French university 
degree) and Vassar College for pupils who have gone 
through the course at Sevres. Question the few first-rate 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 325 

French teachers who do honor to our country in the United 
States, such as A. Fortier, Cohn, Bracq, Guerard, etc., 
and you will find that they are lost in a crowd of foreigners 
— Germans, Swiss and Belgians — who teach French in a 
spirit which is neither French nor American. It is because 
Americans will not do without French and have to take 
what they can get. Look at the cosmopolitan university 
clubs to which I have more than once referred, and you will 
find Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Germans, Scandinavians, 
Italians and Indians, but not a single Frenchman. The 
Americans are certainly not to blame for this. It was 
proposed to open two foreign houses, one German and the 
other French, within the precincts of Columbia University ; 
and while the very large German colony easily found the 
money, the French colony, select but small, could not make 
the same effort. It had to be left to a generous American, 
A. Barton Hepburn, and then the cost of fitting up the house 
had to be met partly by another American, our friend, 
Robert Bacon, partly by the Carnegie endowment for inter- 
national peace. The result is that if France did not exert 
such an exceptionally attractive force, and if our pioneers' 
shades did not rise up out of the ground and speak to the 
imagination, America's attention would be attracted and re- 
tained by every country on the globe except ours. It was 
in libraries founded by Americans in the Far East that the 
Chinese found the books they needed for drawing up the 
main principles of their RepubHcan constitution. A coun- 
try cannot make war with impunity for centuries. It eats 
into its capital ; it draws on the generations to come, on 
the "human harvest" of the future, to use the words of 
President David Starr Jordan ; it becomes either depopu- 
lated or materialized. This is the view of a great many 
Americans. Far from feeling attracted towards victorious 
Germany, which I long believed to be the case, the Ameri- 
cans would like to return to us, because they appreciate the 



326 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

persistence and disinterestedness of our idealistic efforts 
and because our conceptions are related to theirs. In pro- 
portion as the Germans repudiate the idealism which was 
once their glory, they diminish the value and the repu- 
tation of their output; and their work depreciates be- 
cause it has abandoned goodness for utilitarianism. '' Made 
in Germany" stands for inferior, second-rate goods. This 
fall in the reputation of the trade-mark of a country is an 
incalculable loss to it. When Germany mocks at the pure 
aspirations of her past, she is threatened by a great danger 
— that of an intellectual and moral decline in proportion to 
her material advance.^ 

The Americans fully realize all this, but as in other 
cases, they have no time to pick and choose. It is better, 
they say, to have French taught by Germans than not 
to have it taught at all. 

''£ Pluribus Unum^^ 

The spirit of the American universities could not be so 
alive and so keen for true progress if it did not draw on 
the infinitely varied wellsprings of the whole country. "E 
pluribus unum" is one of the mottoes on Washington's 
house at Mount Vernon. But who can guarantee that all 
these springs are properly tapped, clean and pure? This 
is the main question, from the European point of view ; it 
does not arise at all in the United States, where public 
opinion is on the watch. 

This is what I want my readers clearly to understand. 
I did not reahze it myself until after a very long time. 

1 The war, declared by Germany, in her pride, will be followed by a 
material decline coming on the heels of a moral and intellectual decline. 
German pride has rotted the fruit of German efforts. (March, 191 5.) 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 327 

The Leaders of Public Spirit 

Let us take the case of the most independent self-govern- 
ing universities. Here again it is impossible to classify 
strictly. There are state universities, kept up by the whole 
body of taxpayers, as we have seen at Seattle, Madison 
and Berkeley. There are others that were established by 
the state but enlarged by private donations, as Tulane. 
Others are supported by a city, like New York City College ; 
and finally others, the most important and prosperous 
of all, such as Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Johns Hopkins, 
Chicago, etc., were founded by private individuals 
and live exclusively on their own resources and private 
donations. The universities of this last class form the 
principal nurseries of American enterprise, and it is there- 
fore a matter of national importance to make sure that they 
are intellectually and morally well managed. Who, then, 
are the gifted inspectors responsible for their superinten- 
dence ? Public spirit, or, to be more exact, the nominees of 
pubhc spirit. 

Trustees 

Who are these nominees ? The trustees ; that is to say, 
a certain number of public-spirited men, selected as well 
as possible to keep the institution alive. These trustees 
do not meet like a European committee appointed to eluci- 
date a question, settle it or bury it. They act as a per- 
manent council. They look into the accounts, see how 
the management has done its work in the past and give it 
the authority it needs for future development. The presi- 
dent of a university has the fullest liberty of action so long 
as he is approved by the trustees. Everything therefore 
depends on how the trustees do their work ; but what is 
essentially American is that the trustees do more than take 
their duties seriously ; they put their heart into the work. 



328 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Many of them are former students of the university and 
are as attached to it as to their own mother. They take 
great pride in their ''alma mater." Many of them are 
donors or friends of donors, and, while the latter contribute 
their money, it is tacitly understood that the others give 
their time and trouble. Their work, for which they receive 
no pay, must absorb a great deal of time and effort, but 
all pay the tribute cheerfully. We find many cases of son 
succeeding father in these honorary responsibilities, as at 
Columbia, where President Seth Low (who did so much 
good and continues to do so assiduously in combination 
with his successor) simply continued his father's self-sacri- 
ficing labors for the pubUc. I was present on June 5, 191 1, 
at the great festival at Columbia known as "Commence- 
ment Day." It corresponds to our prize distributions in 
France and is the occasion on which the names of those 
students who have passed their final examinations and are 
entitled to practice their profession — medicine, for in- 
stance — are announced. Nothing is more imposing than 
the sight of the veteran educational volunteers who head 
the procession of men and girl students and pupils through 
the gardens, which are already too small for the steadily 
developing university. Every one who is entitled to march 
in this procession makes a point of being present every 
year, and some travel great distances so as not to miss it. 
The men who lead the way on this occasion are those who 
govern Columbia University, constitute its public spirit 
and are conscious of responsibility towards the pupils, the 
students, their parents and the country in general. 

Lafayette College. Columbia University. Harvard, 

Princeton 

I was invited to deliver an address at Lafayette College, 
a few hours' journey from New York — an address that 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 329 

appealed specially to the management of this excellent 
establishment, in consequence of its name and its French 
predilections. A highly respected trustee came to my hotel 
in New York to fetch me, with some of his friends. He 
took me to the train, showed me to my seat, came with me 
and brought me back. Why? Because he had given the 
college part of his Hfe and part of his heart, and he felt he 
must be present. This self-sacrificing attitude on the 
part of a man who was elderly, rich and no doubt had 
plenty of other things to do, helped to throw a good deal of 
light on the situation. 

The permanent outlines of public spirit in the United 
States are a reahty, and the effects are felt in all depart- 
ments of life. In most states, except in a few of the more 
backward, the teacher, who can make or mar, is not always 
well paid, but generally honored, particularly in the higher 
branches of education. Although there is so great a demand 
for engineers, architects, business men, lawyers, farmers, 
merchants, manufacturers, bankers and so on, any one who 
has a vocation for teaching is sure of encouragement. Who- 
ever imparts knowledge performs a public service for which 
the pubhc is grateful. One reason why I was well received 
in the United States was that my mission was educational. 
University presidents fill an important place in the pubhc 
Hfe of the United States. Andrew D. White, my American 
colleague at the first Hague Congress, and formerly am- 
bassador at Berhn, was chosen on account of his university 
distinction. The name of Lowell, poet and ambassador, 
is intimately connected with that of Harvard University, 
of which his nephew is now president. My col- 
leagues, David Jayne Hill and Seth Low, were both emi- 
nent university men and writers. President Emeritus 
Charles W. Ehot, of Harvard, and President Nicholas 
Murray Butler, of Columbia, are in the front rank of the 
men whose views carry weight in moral and pohtical ques- 



330 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

tions. Robert Bacon gave up his Paris embassy to place 
his services, like a good son of his alma mater, at the dis- 
posal of Harvard. 

The period of political disturbances through which the 
United States passed in 191 2 — a period in which, con- 
trary to custom, there were four candidates for President 
instead of two — ended in an immense majority voting 
for Mr. Woodrow Wilson, although he was in no way su- 
perior to his competitors in reputation or eloquence. He 
was president of Princeton University. 

We thus find that, so far from being handicapped by their 
complete decentralization and infinite variety, the uni- 
versities have gained by it. Their organization has as 
little as possible of the formal and official about it, and is 
run almost on family lines. There is a lasting feeling of 
comradeship between the successive generations of students, 
at least as regards those of the same sex, as the principle of 
coeducation, so general in the West, is steadily losing 
ground in the East, where the grade of study is higher. 

Coeducation 

This is a great pity. Youths and girls are humanized 
by semi-fraternal intercourse and are thus prepared to 
know each other better in later life. Freedom for a girl 
obliges her to exercise more self-restraint, and also accus- 
toms a young man to greater respect for her and for him- 
self. Young people should not be isolated and made shy. 
The young American men whom I saw among the girls in 
the West struck me as purer and more attractive than any- 
where else, and also as morally stronger, inasmuch as they 
undertake the most difficult part of education, that of their 
own self-will. They are accustomed to fight the first battle 
with themselves — the battle that decides all the others. 
They have to choose between debauchery, which is im- 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 33 1 

possible in these surroundings, and chastity. Coeducation 
of the sexes is a school of uprightness and energy. It makes 
young men more sociable, less awkward and better fitted 
to make their way in life. 

Wellesley College 

It seemed to me that the Boston girls still enjoyed great 
liberty. I saw them flitting around in all directions, like 
birds, in the charming parks and landscapes near the city. 
I saw many others boating on the lakes and the river, which 
reminded me of the Thames. There were swarms of them 
at Wellesley, that fine college. Under the shade of the 
trees and on the undulating lawns of the park I saw them, 
in their light-colored robes, give an extract from the 
'' Odyssey" translated into English. One of them played 
Ulysses and another was Nausicaa with her maidens. It 
was charming, but had a tinge of melancholy, more EngHsh 
than American. 

Vassar College 

I also spoke at Vassar College, another place of education 
for girls, near the Hudson. There were no young men. 
Here I came, under the influence, perhaps, of a lovely day 
at the end of May and also of an admirable superintendent, 
not to mention our compatriot, M. Bracq, but it seemed to 
me that this independent college, founded by a Frenchman 
named Vasseur, was a tangible reward for American ini- 
tiative and confidence. There were hundreds of girls, go- 
ing and coming as they pleased, talking and playing games 
in the park, in which they seemed perfectly at home. They 
were nearly all tall and slender. They were bare-headed, 
they looked one straight in the face and health radiated 
from their clear complexions. They were dressed accord- 
ing to each one's own taste, but all were in very light colors. 



332 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

It was a wonderful glimpse into the future. It made me 
forget the present and ask myself if this could possibly be 
America in the year 191 1? It was more like a vision of 
ancient Greece — an island of the yEgean Sea inhabited by 
nymphs, among whom I felt myself a being from another 
epoch, another country and even another world. Once 
more I had to note that sports and outdoor life have created, 
or rather revived, a form of classic physical beauty, ele- 
gance of personal appearance and movement and general 
distinction, in the United States just as in England. The 
girls and young men I have seen in these American colleges 
are certainly much nearer the Greek type than modern 
Greeks are. This does not prevent the New York boule- 
vard spirit from making fun of them. On the walls and 
boardings are posters of a comic opera, "The Vassar Girls," 
the subject of which can be easily imagined. The boulevard 
spirit, however, is not that of the American public ; of this 
I have seen plenty of proof in New York itself. 

Girrs Normal College in New York 

On another occasion I was asked by that distinguished 
Frenchman, H. Bargy, to give an address to the girls in 
the New York Normal College. There were more than a 
thousand of them. The only subject I treated was their 
influence on the future. I have never seen anything more 
encouraging than this audience, with the high enthusiasm 
and spirit of cheerful and determined self-sacrifice that 
shone from their young faces. I was supposed to be in- 
structing them, but no one can tell how much I learned from 
these lectures. 

Meeting of School Children 

A still stronger impression, an unforgettable one, was left 
on my mind by a meeting held in 1907, while I was on my 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 333 

way through New York. The opportunity was taken to 
bring all the school children of the city together and initiate 
them in what has to be done to disseminate ideas of justice 
and peace. Nothing could have been more eloquent than 
this meeting, in the preparation of which the educational 
authorities took the greatest interest. There were four or 
five thousand boys and girls seated in their fresh, clean 
dresses and well-brushed clothes. It was evident that when 
their turn came to be citizens they would organize things 
with the same order and discipHne as in their games. They 
were genuine ''kids" before they came in and when they 
went out, but they were Hke httle citizens throughout the 
meeting. They felt a sense of responsibihty, and, as a 
matter of fact, they were responsible. Any disturbance 
among these thousands of children, left to sit in the long 
rows of chairs extending from the stage right up to the 
balcony, might have degenerated into a panic ; but an army 
of veterans could not have maneuvered in more orderly 
style. It was a voluntary submission to discipline as a 
preparation for every other form of discipline in the future. 

The Protection of Youth. The Sorhonne and the Boulevard 

St. Michel 

/ The Americans reaHze that the mere instruction of the 
young is not enough, and for this reason they have been 
reproached for sacrificing instruction too much. Young 
people must be brought up and protected against themselves 
when they enter upon Hfe and against the appeals of the 
outside world. An eminent French educationaKst, who 
went over Columbia University with me, observed : ''What 
a number of precautions they take to keep their students 
in the university ! Look at those two immense swimming 
baths, one for the girls and the other for the boys, where 
they can train into champions I Look at the gymnasium 



334 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and playgrounds — not quite large enough here but im- 
mense at other universities — and look outside, in the 
streets ! There are no bars, no drinking places and no 
temptations." He was right, and I could not help drawing 
a comparison between these motherly precautions, not only 
encouraged but insisted upon by American public spirit, 
with the manner in which our students, at the Sorbonne, 
for instance, are left entirely to their own devices. Noth- 
ing but study in all its beauty, and also its austerity, is 
there to keep them indoors. They have no park, not a 
single tree or playground, or place for rest; but outside, 
at the very door, is the Boulevard St. Michel with light 
love constantly making claims on their attention and in- 
flicting the temptation of St. Anthony upon them. It is 
clear that those who can withstand this temptation at the 
age of twenty develop into men of the finest kind, but what 
becomes of the others, among whom are some of the best, 
the most generous and the most highly gifted? 

Americans do not consider they have done all there is 
to be done when they have established classes, lectures, 
museums and universities. Their object is to produce not 
merely a few learned men, but generations of citizens and 
real men. To this end, they begin by doing all they can 
to keep their young men out of the temptation to excesses 
that make them old before their time and end by producing 
nothing but invalids, skeptics and brutes, which are the same 
thing. 

Yale University. President Taft 

In any case, this system of supervised liberty succeeds, 
not with every American I admit, but with Americans as a 
whole. Their education develops not only gracefulness of 
movement and honest pride, but frankness and openness as 
well, even among youths at the awkward hobbledehoy age. 
I have often been struck by the obligingness of the pupils. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 335 

Here is another instance of it. My visit to Yale Univer- 
sity, where ex-President Taft is a brilHant professor, was 
not on my hst of engagements, and no arrangements had 
been made for it by my friends. The result was that, 
when I arrived, I found nothing more at the railroad 
station than guides who, though very polite, were both 
discouraged and discouraging. According to them, there 
was no one to see, nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing 
to listen to and so on. I was especially disappointed be- 
cause I had induced the aviator Bleriot and one of our 
French friends to come with me. My idea was to give 
the students a pleasant surprise by presenting him to them, 
but all I could find out at first was that nobody took any 
interest in us and that there was nothing to be done but 
to lunch and go back again. Not being easily turned from 
my purpose, I grumbled at first, and then, having thought 
the matter over, I hailed two young students who were 
walking across the campus. I explained the situation, and 
told them that the misunderstanding was likely to make me 
lose my time and prevent their comrades from seeing 
Bleriot. "That would be a great pity," they replied; 
"wait a Httle." They went off to see the dean, and while 
we lunched at a hospitable house, they spread the news 
among their comrades, who began to assemble in crowds. 
In a very few minutes there was an open-air mass meeting 
of them, and we were able to address them in light-hearted 
style, shake hands with them and tell one another how 
pleased we were to meet. The initiative and kindliness of 
those young men had saved the day for us. 

The Church as a School 

The most surprising thing is that these instances of 
initiative are never discouraged. Some of them are in- 
advisable, of course, but the exception proves the rule. 



336 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The extreme liberty of America cannot exist without an 
amount of tolerance incredible to many Europeans. The 
Vassar College girls belong to different reHgions. Some 
are connected with various Protestant sects, others are 
Christian Scientists, Catholics or Israelites, and some are 
almost freethinkers ; but the college has only one place of 
worship, a fine church where they all meet at the same 
time to meditate, sing hymns and repeat the same prayer. 
It is one more application of the motto ''E pluribus unum," 
and we shall find another presently. The same principle 
prevails at Columbia University. I stopped in front of 
the chapel one day and asked President Nicholas Murray 
Butler to tell me who conducted the service and addressed 
the girls and young men. *'Any one who can teach them 
anything good; you, if you like," he replied. ''But," I 
continued, ''what if the person who undertakes such a re- 
sponsibiHty discharges it badly?" "We give credit for 
good intentions and we rely on pubHc spirit, which governs 
here just as it does elsewhere." 

Toleration 

The church is a school. Everything, in fact, is utilized 
for scholastic purposes. Henry Bargy, in his fine book on 
rehgion in the United States, very justly observes: "The 
churches are no longer sanctuaries. The pulpit is becoming 
a platform. The teaching of moral and rehgious science is 
assuming something of a religious character, while religion 
tends to become secular. The church is in process of evo- 
lution in the direction of the people's university. The 
church is at the service of human intelligence, instead 
of man being at the service of God" (see page 208). I 
have heard applause in churches and hymns in theaters. 
President Charles W. EHot, who superintended Harvard 
University so brilUantly for so long a time, was also the 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 337 

apostle of a religious conception which does away with 
formal observances — a conception certainly not shared 
by all the parents of the thousands of young men intrusted 
to his guidance, but his educational influence was far from 
being diminished thereby. 

Freedom for Educators 

This tolerance is no less extraordinary in politics. Presi- 
dent Wheeler, who, as we have seen, is president of the 
CaHfornia State University, was a strong opponent of Presi- 
dent Taft, or, in other words, a strong supporter of Presi- 
dent Taft's rival, Colonel Roosevelt. In the same state 
was the president of Stanford University, a Democrat and 
mihtant pacifist. As for New York, the president of 
Columbia University played an important part in the Re- 
pubhcan convention at Chicago ; and as for the president of 
Princeton, he could not be anything but an ardent Wilsonian. 

This Hberty accorded to educators is used even in foreign 
politics. The strongest and most cordial encouragement I 
received was at the universities ; at St. Louis and New 
Orleans ; in Texas, Minnesota and Wisconsin ; at Kansas 
City and Colorado just as in the states of New York, 
Massachusetts and New England in general. On all sides, 
especially at the universities, I experienced something 
better than hospitaUty ; I found friends who encouraged 
me and have since worked continuously with me. It was 
President Butler who in 1902 urged me to see President 
Roosevelt, as I have already described, and ask for his 
support of the Hague tribunal. He has since placed him- 
self at the head of a movement, which harmonizes very 
well with his university duties, for the development of 
internal prosperity through good international relations — 
a formula now in common use. The American ''Inter- 
national ConciHation" branch, founded by him in the 



338 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

United States, is of greater importance than all the others 
combined, as it has nearly a hundred thousand supporters 
belonging to the best class throughout the country, and 
it is in touch with similar associations in Germany, Great 
Britain, Japan and other countries. He was chosen by 
Andrew Carnegie, at the same time as Elihu Root was 
selected, to be one of the guiding spirits in his colossal 
peace institution. For several years in succession he pre- 
sided over the much-discussed International Arbitration 
Conferences at Lake Mohonk, and every one of his opening 
speeches was a political pronouncement that might cer- 
tainly have been contrary to the opinions of more than one 
family among his pupils. The latter have none the less 
steadily increased in number, as have the donations made 
to his university. He and many other educationalists who 
work with him have contributed greatly towards the evo- 
lution of American public spirit in the well-defined direction 
of arbitration and conciliation. 

I will now say something about the great forum at Lake 
Mohonk — a curious institution which is, I believe, unique 
in the world. Side by side with the university, the church 
and foundations of all kinds, it is a form of untrammeled 
education in the United States. 

2. Lake Mohonk. The Brothers Smiley 

Lake Mohonk was founded by two Providence school 
teachers — twins, the Smiley brothers, both confirmed 
idealists. Not content with having spent their lives, up 
to a mature age, in the education of youth, they undertook 
to instruct opinion, public spirit, the Press and political 
parties. They were inspired by the idea of endowing the 
United States with a forum exclusively for the advocacy 
of great ideas and great causes. They began by making 
their fortunes and killing two birds with one stone. First 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 339 

of all, they found a firm basis in the shape of an attractive 
location where their idea could take root and extend into 
the infinite. They did not build on clouds, but on a rock, 
on the bank of a deep lake of pure water, amid solitary 
cHffs, far enough from populous centers to be safe from 
undesirable visitors and yet near enough to form a meeting 
place for those earnest American men and women who, like 
themselves, had an ideal. Would that I had time to 
describe this delightful place, still a virgin solitude, where all 
is light, silence and liberty I And yet it is only halfway 
between New York and the state capitol, Albany, but the 
journey is complicated. It is made from New York, either 
by railroad to Poughkeepsie or by one of the splendid 
steamers that ply on the Hudson and float majestically 
like swans on the bosom of the river, past rocks and woods. 
Opposite Poughkeepsie is a trolley car that takes you into 
the mountains as far as New Paltz, where you change 
into a comfortable carriage and are conveyed to Lake 
Mohonk. This is the approach to the Catskill Mountains. 
In this deep-seated retreat, left undisturbed by human 
industry, the Smileys made their way to the heart of forest 
and lake and traced out an immense and impenetrable 
domain, which they acquired partly out of their savings 
and partly by raising loans. They built excellent roads all 
leading to the central point, and there, halfway up and 
hanging over the transparent turquoise waters of the lake, 
they built — what ? A Swiss hotel. 

The Lake Cure 

''What a piece of vandaKsm !" I hear someone exclaim. 
Not at all. It was foresight amounting to genius. The two 
teachers realized that their countrymen could not always 
live in a state of hustle and overwork, and that they would 
need quiet and rest. In this way began what has now be- 



340 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

come a fashion, like going to the Itahan lakes — the "cure" 
among the lakes that form the greatest natural beauty of 
the northwest part of the United States, and especially to 
the north, between the White Mountains and the Green 
Mountains and as far as the Canadian frontier. No 
motor cars are allowed in Lake Mohonk Park. There is 
no dust, no smell of gasoline and no noise. A vigilant 
gatekeeper, at the far-off entrance, keeps out intruders. 
Alcohol is not allowed inside. Sobriety is the rule in the 
house, but the food is very good and well served. A post 
and telegraph office, a supply of daily newspapers, a very 
large concert and lecture hall, a library, reading and writ- 
ing rooms are on the premises, and outside the front door 
are breaks and carriages of all kinds to take you into the 
mountains or to the golf course, and tennis courts nearer at 
hand. At the lakeside there are plenty of boats for rowing, 
and swimming. This sanatorium for healthy people — 
quite a northern oasis — became such a success that the 
hotel soon had to be enlarged to four times its size in every 
direction, — height, breadth and length, — and it can now 
accommodate five or six hundred travelers. The Smileys 
had made their fortune. They took advantage of it, not 
to enjoy themselves but to realize their ideal. 

Debating Great Ideas 

Twice a year their secretary draws up a list of persons 
interested in some great cause, and twice a year these per- 
sons are invited to* meet in the solitudes of Lake Mohonk, 
a week before the hotel opens at the end of May, or after 
it closes in September. All Americans and foreigners who 
are known to have rendered service to international arbi- 
tration, and whom the best journalists of the country are 
anxious to meet, are thus invited, five or six months in 
advance, to come and spend four or five days with Messrs. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 34 1 

Smiley. On the appointed date, carriages are waiting for 
them at the Httle mountain raih'oad station, New Paltz, 
whence a fast drive of a Httle more than an hour takes them 
to the hotel ; and then begins a delightful period of retire- 
ment from the world — a conspiracy of earnest people who 
need to know one another, to combine and to give mutual 
instruction and encouragement. All their energies, instead 
of being wasted on isolated attempts, constitute a force, 
with the public authorities, the Press and public opinion on 
its side instead of against it. One of the brothers Smiley 
died, leaving the other, to take part in the labors of the con- 
ference and, together with his family, to extend a benev- 
olent welcome to their guests. He has recently died, 
leaving an excellent will, by which he bequeathed not only 
his fortune but his program to his descendants. 

Supporting Great Causes 

When we remember that this platform is available every 
year to workers who are engaged in various forms of effort 
but are all enlisted in the service of the same ideal, and 
are fighting, not without courage and great disinterested- 
ness, in the United States, against egoism in all its forms, 
and for negro education, protection of Indians, and, in fact, 
all just causes, it must be admitted that a pilgrimage to 
Lake Mohonk is very tempting. I made this pilgrimage 
and came back filled with emotion and gratitude. I would 
like to be able to accept the invitation to go to Lake Mo- 
honk with my family every year. Once more I return to 
my work richer in hope and more convinced than ever in 
the ultimate triumph of our so-called illusions. This is a 
triumph that never will be, and ought not to be, complete, 
because we need to wage continual conflicts and overcome 
obstacles to bring us nearer to the summit, which we shall 
never reach because it rises with us. 



342 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The gathering at Lake Mohonk is not a pacifist one. It 
was in no way identical, for instance, with the peace con- 
gress that met a few weeks earher at Baltimore. I have 
said nothing about this assembly, because these congresses 
are all alike, and it is quite exceptional for me to attend any 
of them. Every one must play his own part, and I am led 
by experience, good or bad, in the course of my career, 
and by my parliamentary responsibility, to encourage all 
worthy forms of initiative as far as possible^ but to take 
part only in those that strike me not merely as desirable, 
but as likely to produce results in the near future. I say 
this less as a philanthropist than as a statesman, in the 
interest of my own country and every country. Lake 
Mohonk is a concentration point where practical men, 
business men, bankers and statesmen meet philanthropists. 
What harm is there in this? On the contrary, is it not 
desirable that incompatibility should not be established 
between morality and politics? and that a patriot should 
be allowed to be a pacifist just as a pacifist gives his life 
for a principle? None of the misunderstandings with 
which we are acquainted in Europe exist on the peace ques- 
tion at Lake Mohonk. The great majority of the country 
has made up its mind to have peace, and, under these cir- 
cumstances, how are people to be expected not to discuss 
means for organizing it? How is the national foreign 
policy, which affects every citizen's pocket, to be withheld 
from public debate ? How can people fail to be interested 
in the demands of national defense, the colonies, military 
and naval expenditure, superdreadnoughts treaties with 
foreign countries, the Panama Canal, and so on? All 
these subjects are of the highest interest to the educators 
of the country, and Americans, who have very little con- 
ception of the historical and geographical difficulties that 
beset us in Europe, can understand neither our scruples 
nor our perplexities in this order of ideas. At Lake Mohonk 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 343 

and elsewhere I have heard debates on a theory now 
generally accepted which originated at Pittsburgh — that 
outdoor sports are the moral equivalent of war from the 
educational point of view, and that such sports develop 
the warlike virtues which are themselves the natural com- 
plement of well-organized peace. Americans are far from 
wanting to degenerate. They mean to fortify themselves 
and make themselves invincible by peace. They are a 
long way from relapsing into the inferior enjoyments of a 
temporary security or the pleasures of Capua; but they 
reahze that war is no longer a sport, or is becoming too 
abnormal and expensive a sport to be modern. They are 
convinced that young men, accustomed from their earliest 
childhood to the voluntary discipline, endurance, self- 
possession, agility and prompt decision required by out- 
door sports, will be well prepared to defend their country in 
case of need. All they would have to learn would be to use a 
rifle and adopt military discipline. In this way Americans 
not only avoid neutralizing part of the national wealth and 
strength, but help to develop them, so that the country can 
utilize the full extent of its resources whenever necessary. 

The Lake Mohonk lectures on arbitration and against 
the constantly increasing claims of armed peace constitute 
the clearest and most positive teaching to be found in the 
United States. 

3. The Education oj Political Parties. Political Classifi- 
cations 

It is the same with the Lake Mohonk addresses against 
drink and with the examples of tolerance in favor of the 
Jews and of the oppressed of all kinds. It can doubtless 
be said of every one of these problems that its settlement 
is chimerical, but there is not one that we are entitled to 
neglect. The Lake Mohonk idealists are therefore justified 



344 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

in discussing these matters, and their great merit is to 
provide the various political parties with material for their 
platforms out of the debates, which are correctly reported 
or summarized in all the papers. Lake Mohonk is a reser- 
voir of ideas, and those that have stood the test of debate, 
and have filtered through, circulate throughout the coun- 
try and are to be found in the programs of all parties. 

Contributing to the education of the various political 
parties, improving their organizations and especially their 
methods, renewing their ideals and putting emulation in 
the place of indifference to great questions, seems to me to 
constitute a very great service, all the more essential as the 
country is more disturbed. Ten years ago, the peaceful 
settlement of international conflicts was not included in 
any definite program. The organization of arbitration 
is now an electoral platform, quite as much for the Progres- 
sives and Republicans as for the Democrats. Mr. W. J. 
Bryan came to Lake Mohonk in support of this organiza- 
tion as the leader, at that time, of the Democratic party. 
Mr. Roosevelt justly claims the honor of having shown 
the way to others. Mr Taft has gone still further. As 
for the Socialists, their protests cover the whole question. 

A process of intense electoral ferment is going on in the 
United States. The two great historical parties. Demo- 
cratic and Republican, no longer suffice. The dissatisfied, 
the credulous and the impatient are camping out to the 
right and left of the old parties, each of which has its part 
to play, one being the brake and the other the whip. This 
evolution is about the same in all parliamentary countries. 
Economic and social questions have upset the positions of 
the parties, which were more or less weakened by holding 
office, as well as by the ambition and failings of individuals, 
and were more or less divided against themselves by serious 
conflicts of interest between different districts. There is 
now a greater distance between rival members of one party 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 345 

than there is between the principles advocated by two 
opposing parties. Certain essential principles, such as free 
trade in England, are common to two sections of two oppos- 
ing parties and are supported jointly by these sections 
against the rest of their parties. The titles of these parties 
thus no longer correspond to reahty, and the result is a 
state of confusion which is wearying pubhc opinion, just as 
deceit on the part of a child annoys its elders. Personally 
I decline to accept the classification of American parties 
without examination, just as I ask Americans not to judge 
us Europeans by labels varying in meaning according to 
latitude and circumstances. A Radical in the south of 
France is often more conservative than a moderate Repub- 
lican in the north. Some of our Radical-Socialists are 
mihtarists and megalomaniacs, and it is the same with 
some of the new EngHsh Radicals and with more than one 
American Democrat. It is therefore natural that the elec- 
torate, not knowing how the land lies, should want some- 
thing new, and that their feehng of disappointment should 
encourage overbidding for their support; but this state 
of disquiet does not at present imply anything undesirable 
for the future of the United States, and is, on the con- 
trary, a good sign, inasmuch as it stimulates energy. 

Misleading Names 

The fact is that all the old parties — Whigs and Tories, 
Liberals and Conservatives — are compelled to come 
closer, not to absorb one another, but to unite so as to 
make the greatest or smallest possible number of conces- 
sions to popular claims ; but the maximum is never any- 
thing more than a beginning. They represent the unpopu- 
lar status quo and, for the time being, defend it, whether 
they like it or not. They constitute a natural center of 
resistance much more than of action — a center of modera- 



346 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

tion and opportunism with whose slow progress impatient 
humanity must put up. It is, in short, a center — a word 
that sums up the whole situation. This center nevertheless 
obtained ten out of fifteen miUion votes immediately after 
a fierce electoral struggle in the United States, and it might 
further reckon on the future support of a large number of 
the dissident RepubHcans who followed President Roose- 
velt in all good faith. These ten miUions consist of 6,500,000 
Democrats and 3,500,000 Republicans. The two unequal 
portions of this center, being always in a state of uncertain 
equihbrium, in the United States as elsewhere, will have 
to come to an understanding and make their respective 
supporters agree to unpleasant sacrifices and give up many 
positions and personal advantages. On this condition they 
may look forward to a useful career and the accompHsh- 
ment of a set of ideal reforms, beginning with the complete 
aboHtion of the too-celebrated bosses, or corruption com- 
mittees, already condemned by legislation under the pres- 
sure of pubhc opinion. After this, and above all, come the 
development of education in all its forms and in all direc- 
tions, the study of new problems at home and abroad, and 
the improvement of economic and social conditions through- 
out the country, in and through a properly understood, 
well- organized and assured peace. Only by this policy will 
the center exist. It will triumph if it places the interest of 
the country before the claims of its coteries, and wise and 
well-considered reforms before routine and election promises. 
Otherwise, if it hesitates and fails to muster up sufficient 
courage to take firm ground between quagmire and preci- 
pice, and if it tries to flatter both sides, its action will be no 
better than make-beHeve or caricature and merely justify 
the existence of the extremist parties. 

Neither of these parties deserves to be treated as of Httle 
account, because their support comes from the same class 
— the discontented, many of whom are perfectly sincere. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 347 

The Dissatisfied Rich and Poor 

There are two very distinct sections among the dis- 
contented : the rich and the poor. There is a great gulf 
fixed between them, but some accidental circumstance 
might easily make them combine in some sudden and mis- 
taken course. The center constructs, not very well, but 
still it constructs ; the two extremes want to construct also, 
but for the time being, destruction is the only point on 
which they agree. This union of adventurousness and 
anarchy has always borne the same fruit : revolution. 

The wealthy discontented are the same everywhere, and 
it matters Httle how they are styled — jingoes, plehisci- 
taires, pronunciamientists, partisans of personal power, of 
a military dictatorship and finally of war. We may call 
them Pan-Germans, Imperialists, Panslavists, Panhellenists, 
Boulangists, Derouledists or Rooseveltites, but as a matter 
of fact they are all alike. In the United States they have 
reckoned up their forces for the first time — after making 
due allowance, as I have said, for those who were tem- 
porarily led away — and they attained a total of four 
millions out of fifteen millions of voters. This is an im- 
pressive figure, but should not be taken too seriously, be- 
cause, in spite of its demagogue appearance and of the 
elements of violence which are poisoning it, the new party, 
known as the Progressive, is nevertheless, as a whole, 
deserving of respect as an indication of the idealistic and 
moral yearnings of the United States. It has been de- 
scribed as exploiting idealism and indiscriminately promis- 
ing to satisfy all the generous desires of the country. 

The Center between the two Wings 

As for Sociahsm, it is a party of destruction and of 
promises, and this is its weakness rather than its strength. 



348 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

It implies war on opportunism and war on capitalism, but 
it is war all the same. Can this be a new religion ? If so, 
it would have the support of the men and women — and 
they are innumerable in this country — who aspire after 
better things; but in reality it is simply another form of 
hatred, and this is what Americans do not want. It is not 
a remedy but a danger for a young nation in search of 
unity. Complaints would be listened to, but hatred is 
feared. Women seem to me to be better organized than 
Socialists in the United States, and they have succeeded 
better. Why? Because they have abstained from nega- 
tive or indefinite grievances, and brought their efforts to 
bear on certain definite points, such as the drink traffic, 
education, the protection of children, hygiene, etc. 

Comparative Weakness of Socialism 

The Socialists realize their numerical inferiority. Their 
candidate, Mr. Debs, did not obtain more than a million 
votes in all. This was more than at the previous election, 
but there again we must look at the facts behind the figures. 
I dined with the principal Socialist leaders in New York, at 
their club, which profits, like every other institution, by un- 
limited toleration from the universities and, consequently, 
from public spirit, and is situated in one of the Columbia 
University buildings. The Socialists have to admit that 
the frontiers of their party are not easy to define. They 
are not supported even by the labor unions, who mistrust 
politicians. The result is that a great many workers 
escape from their influence. (I do not mean to say that 
all the poor are on one side and all the rich on the other. 
I know some wealthy Socialists, and my own attempts at 
classification are no more perfect than those of the parties 
themselves.) The fact is that the Socialists are a rather 
indeterminate party. They are not even supported by 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 349 

the intellectuals who, as a whole, want to carry on their 
work in peace. Moreover, they (the Socialists) cannot 
help admitting that, in this new country, where new forms 
of progress spring out of the earth every day, a great deal 
had been accomplished before they were heard of and with- 
out their assistance. What reason is there, then, for ex- 
perimenting with their form of government? Their pro- 
gram is necessarily still more indefinite than the boundaries 
of their political domain. They encounter prejudice and 
they meet with insurmountable obstacles. They, and they 
especially, meet the difficulty by adopting idealistic re- 
forms, wherein they, like other parties, can exert a salutary 
and moral influence — which accounts for a great deal of 
the support they have obtained. ''We are idealists first 
and foremost," one of their leaders told me. "What we 
want our country to have is a peaceful future that will add 
to the national wealth and make it of service to the whole 
community instead of to the privileged few. We want a 
better system of education, although we admit that a great 
deal has been done to educate the people all over the United 
States. Our program consists of developing the national 
wealth and morality, two words that are one to our minds. 
We are so idealistic that our friends in Australia, New Zea- 
land and the Cape come to us for inspiration rather than 
to Europe." 

What difference is there between these aspirations and 
the most unselfish ideals in all countries ? 

One obstacle to the practical application of Socialism in 
the United States is the existence, side by side, of too many 
different languages, races and religions. It is difficult for 
Socialism to effect a combination of so many heterogeneous 
elements that are already divided among themselves. 
They are so many Towers of Babel which can be more or 
less effectively held together only by the national ambition 
to be a great people. It is difficult, for instance, for Social- 



350 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

istic propaganda to bring about a definite rapprochement 
between the negro workman and the white workman. 
An antagonism carried to the point of incompatibihty 
exists between them, and is so pronounced that many 
employers provide against possible strikes by keeping gangs 
of negroes ready to take the place of the whites and break 
up the movement. How, moreover, can any effective in- 
fluence be exerted, over immense distances, on a crowd of 
foreign workmen — Germans, Poles, Italians, Greeks and 
so on — who do not speak the language of the country, 
cannot get on with one another, and hold to their old tra- 
ditions of antagonism? We know how fiercely the union 
workmen in California opposed competition from yellow 
labor. If Socialism is consistent, it will hold out its hand 
to the Chinese, Japanese, negro and other competitors of 
the American workman ; and if it rejects them and treats 
them as outcasts, what becomes of its doctrine ? We have 
also to take into account the glaring mistakes whereby 
Socialism damages its credit. But the real weakness of 
Socialism, to my mind, lies in the activity of public spirit, 
which never leaves the Socialists a clear field and gives 
them no opening. Another is the wisdom of the two great 
parties. Republican and Democrat, which, though they 
spend a great deal too much money on preparations for a 
war that nobody wants, are nevertheless pacific. If, un- 
fortunately, an outburst of jingoism occurred and the gov- 
ernment became militarized, the Socialist vote would 
double, as we have seen in Germany. There are still many 
other obstacles: the ardent spirit of industry that ani- 
mates the whole country, the lack of idlers, the women, to 
whom I have already referred, the children, even the 
wealthy who are anxious to do useful work, and the numer- 
ous philanthropic institutions, which are becoming the rule 
and not the exception. The people know well, for instance, 
how greatly they benefit by all these educational founda- 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 35 1 

tions, and this consideration alone is enough to prevent 
them from pronouncing wholesale condemnation of an 
organization that has produced such results and is opening 
up the future for them. 

Socialism has less hold on the United States than else- 
where because it cannot have a program, because the pop- 
ulation is small, scattered, varied, divided and not yet 
acclimatized, and especially because it has to cope with 
too many philanthropists. 

4. The Indians 

Of much more seriousness than the future of Socialism 
in the United States is the negro question and, morally, 
the Indian question. The SociaHsts would be in a consid- 
erable quandary if they had to solve these two problems in 
accordance with their own principles. Here, as elsewhere, 
the purest idealism must reckon with facts, and the far 
from cheerful saying, "Reason is not all-powerful, and has 
to endure what it cannot prevent," finds its appHcation. 
It is much to the credit of the brothers Smiley that they 
included these two questions in their program. To be 
quite exact, they began with the Indians even before they 
founded their hotel. The first of these Indian conferences 
dates back to 1883, and they have since been continued 
every year and have brought together the best of America's 
generals, savants, clergy and publicists. As their un- 
doubted efficacy became known, they extended their sphere 
of action. They were consistently opposed to the doctrine 
of domination and especially to that of exterminating the 
natives. In its place they urged that there should be edu- 
cation and cooperation in the Hawaiian islands, Porto 
Rico and the Philippines just as much as in the interior of 
the United States. This spontaneous activity has pro- 
duced incalculable benefit, which came too late, but was 



352 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

eminently practical, if we consider the irreparable mistakes 
they enabled governments to avoid and the germs of 
hatred and revenge whose propagation they prevented. 

American Impatience 

The merit of the work was in proportion to the prejudice 
that had to be overcome. I find that the best and most 
open-minded friends of mine are still skeptical on one ques- 
tion alone — the future of the Indian, and the negroes. 
They have no belief in the "good Indian." They abide 
by one of those Voltairean expressions into which a mis- 
taken conception, generally accepted over a long period of 
years, is cleverly condensed ; they agree with General Sher- 
man that ''the good Indian was a dead Indian." There is 
certainly no lack of vices laid to the Indians' charge — 
idleness, drunkenness, debauchery and so on. For over 
twenty years I have heard this kind of thing. Subse- 
quently, at Lake Mohonk and elsewhere, a very different 
tone greeted my ears. The only views I will quote are 
those of statesmen. 

History of Colonization. French and English 

Mr. Elihu Root, for instance, speaking at the Champlain 
tricentenary celebration in 1909, attributed the final 
triumph of the English principally to the fact that they 
had the assistance of the Iroquois, — that is to say, the 
largest and most powerful tribe, — while France, in spite of 
her heroes, took the side of the Hurons. 

He goes, in fact, too far when he considers that of only sec- 
ondary importance were the repeated failures of Louis XV's 
government to support the French cause and the jealousy 
and dissensions that led to and accentuated these failures 
and paralyzed our pioneers. We were beaten, not by the 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 353 

Hurons' weakness, but by that of our governments. There 
is no need to look elsewhere for the explanation. In any 
case, EHhu Root recognizes the immense value of the 
services the Indians rendered to civilization, and he con- 
firms what we know from correspondence of the period, 
not to mention Fenimore Cooper and Francis Parkman. 
All testimony goes to show that while the Indians had their 
faults, their greatest offense was that of clinging to an 
obsolete style of existence. Have they been allowed to live 
in any other way ? They have been gradually eHminated, 
together with their hunting grounds, their prairies, their 
forests and their game, but their numbers have been re- 
duced first and foremost by internecine warfare. Another 
reason for their dying out is that the United States govern- 
ment not only opposed them, — as it was more or less com- 
pelled to do in retahation or through the inevitable con- 
sequences of accompHshed facts, — but never made real 
and acceptable peace with them. It compelled these 
nomads to remain in reserved territories, it gave them 
neither time nor means to settle down and moved them 
on from time to time, like flocks of sheep, farther and 
farther from their homes. Instead of estimating their 
possible services in the future by the power of resistance 
they had shown in the past, and instead of utilizing this 
force, the government preferred to destroy it. It was all 
very well to defeat and conquer them, but was it neces- 
sary to condemn them to extermination as well? Why? 
Because governments are weak enough to give way to jingo 
pressure, and because, no doubt, a handful of adventurers 
who wanted to rob the Indian had only to accuse him 
of being a national enemy; and because it was more 
difficult to combat American impatience then to de- 
stroy the Indians : to stop and make the effort nec- 
essary to conciliate them. The Americans, who have 
accomplished many more difficult feats than this, have 

2A 



354 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

none the less failed to help the Indians change their 
existence so as to conform to the change in their country. 
The Indians were left to live in a state of idleness, badly 
clothed, badly fed and housed, with no hope and no pur- 
pose, drink-sodden and sick, with dwindling numbers, 
marrying only among themselves and doomed to degenerate 
and die out. They were regarded merely as an obstacle, 
an object of fear for some and of curiosity and exhibition 
for others. The same problem still exists in all European 
colonies, and deserves reflection. If we had followed our 
baser instincts in Tunis only thirty years ago, we should 
have tried to reduce the natives to the condition of Red 
Indians.^ It is easier to exterminate or degrade a people 
than to educate it, but when it has to be replaced, we 
begin to see that there might have been worse, and we 
regret its loss. There is no proof that, with the exercise of 
a little patience and credit, a source of strength and beauty 
could not have been extracted from the Indians. The mis- 
takes that excluded French influence from the development 
of the New World and placed its future under the influence 
of the English language and the exclusive control of the 
European immigrant have perhaps caused civilization to 
lose the benefit of an experiment which deserved to be 
made and which, for the first time, might have been made 
under extremely favorable conditions — a trial of Du- 
pleix's system of government with the assistance of the 
natives, the latter having a share in the government of 
their country. The native in this case was neither the 
negro, nor the Chinese, nor the Arab, nor the fanatic more 
or less inimical to the white race; it was the white race 
itself, or at least — as science is uncertain on this point — 
one of the finest possible types. It was no doubt addicted 
to idolatry and hostile to contradictory conversions by our 

^ See "La Politique Frangaise en Tunisie," by the same author. Plon, 
Paris, 1 89 1. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 355 

Protestant and Catholic missionaries, but it was none the 
less genuine metal which only needed the alloy of a higher 
civilization to become refined and perhaps finer than any 
other. Most of the reproaches we make against the In- 
dian might be urged against ourselves. Every explorer 
has expatiated on his faithfulness, which they had proved, 
inasmuch as they intrusted themselves, for years, to the 
Indians ; but explorers were followed by traders and con- 
querors by speculators. How were the Indians treated in 
return for their fidelity, and what was left undone to de- 
moralize them? The fault, which is only a question of 
degrees, was general. The French, and especially the 
English, must share the responsibility with the Genoese, 
the Spaniards and the Portuguese, who were the first 
offenders, acting, as they did, like the Turks and bar- 
barians whose practices were a monstrous inheritance from 
antiquity and its spirit of domination, slavery and muti- 
lation. We know how physically and morally fine were 
the innocent peoples who threw the Antilles open to Chris- 
topher Columbus and the whole of the New World to the 
European navigators, as far distant as the peaceful islands 
of the ocean called Pacific, and we know how savagely 
and cruelly all these races were destroyed by fire and 
sword, by sickness, by the torture of hard labor and work 
in the gold mines; how, in return for their kindness, we 
let destruction loose upon them, slaughtering men and 
animals alike, burning the forests and depopulating the 
land as far as the ocean and the polar regions, and exhaust- 
ing all the sources of vitality. Is there no appeal against 
this law? Will the history of European colonization be 
forever made up of three periods, more or less prolonged 
but invariable — heroic efforts first of all, then the weaker 
race mercilessly exploited by the stronger and finally a third 
period, chastisement? 

I have often thought of the grief and shame our pioneers 



356 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

would feel if they could come to life again and see how 
their promises have been kept, and if they could see how 
the traces they left have been swept away. Even Dutch 
and French names have been wiped out to a great extent 
and replaced by English, under the influence of the hostile 
feeling prevailing at the time. Francis Parkman has 
pointed out, in a spirit of justice, how greatly English and 
French colonization differed. The Englishman looks upon 
the Indians as intruders, and ignores them until the time 
comes when he can get rid of them. It would never occur 
to him to fraternize with them, and he disposes of them 
quite calmly. The Frenchman regarded the Indians as 
men, as auxiliaries and as friends whom he loved and 
would readily admit into his family. The English have 
never understood or liked the Indians, and, most unfor- 
tunately, the Americans have long followed their example. 
I am told that this misfortune was unavoidable ; without 
trying to find excuses for official harshness or bad faith, 
could the English be compelled to like anybody? 

Spaniards and Puritans 

It is true that the Spaniards managed to populate Peru 
with half-breeds born of their unions with native women. 
This is a matter of temperament, and it may be doubted 
whether these mixed races constitute any advantage to civi- 
lization. But there is another and a serious question to con- 
sider. The position of the Spaniards in the south was 
quite different from that of the EngHsh in the north. The 
Spaniards were attracted to Peru solely by a golden bait. 
They went there without their wives and famihes, they 
were not overburdened with scruples, and they attached no 
importance to temporary unions. The English Puritans, 
on the other hand, left their country to escape persecution. 
They were in pursuit of an ideal. They gave up every- 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 357 

thing for the sake of their beliefs, which they affirmed and 
strengthened by leaving their native land in a body for 
perpetual exile. They embarked upon the foundation of 
another world, which they hoped would be better than the 
old one. They were accompanied by their families, and 
they took with them all their stern moral integrity, their 
pride of race and Anglo-Saxon hauteur. There would have 
been an end to their lineage, and it would have been im- 
possible to gratify their ambition, had they mingled with 
the natives. Instead of attracting their own countrymen 
to follow their example, both they and their principles 
would have been more or less submerged. In any case, 
English Puritanism has certainly intensified many virtues 
inherited by the United States, but it could not populate 
the whole of America. It helped, concurrently with the 
elimination of the French element, to arrest the intermin- 
gling of Europeans and natives; and though this inter- 
mingling has sometimes given indifferent or bad results, it 
has also produced good ones. Facts are facts, and the 
beauty of a race is the result of qualities established ages 
ago. Champlain's contemporaries agree in describing the 
Hurons as fine specimens of humanity. Even to-day we 
see Indians as handsome as types of antiquity, with profiles 
like those of an emperor on a Roman coin. 

Prairie CcEsars 

These prairie Caesars deserved something better than to 
be treated with contempt and sentenced without being tried. 
Their rich blood would have regenerated Europe's. For- 
tunately (let us whisper it) , a good many of the condemned 
managed to soften the hearts of their conquerors, if we may 
judge by the number of North Americans in whose veins 
there is unmistakably Indian blood. Nature will out, and 
it is not by mere chance or imagination that we see, in the 



358 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

eyes of so many young American athletes, the reflection of a 
past dating back to long before the Puritans reached the New 
World, and a vague longing for restoration to an ancient 
status. A reaction, in fact, has begun in favor of the 
Indians, just as we have seen in the case of the forests. 
Nothing is lost, an optimist tells me ; and the Indians have 
never been much more numerous than they are now. A 
great deal was heard of them because they were constantly 
fighting, but they lived in widely scattered groups, each in 
constant danger of being wiped out by another. They 
now total about 400,000 in the territories left to them, until 
further notice, by the United States. It may be that their 
numbers were no greater a couple of centuries ago. It may 
also be that they will cease to be warriors and will become 
farmers, thus taking their share in the peaceful and laborious 
life of the nation. They are now encouraged in this direc- 
tion, thanks to the manner in which private initiative has 
reacted against the previously prevailing sentiment. They 
are now generally looked upon as a healthier and richer 
factor of population than certain emigrants who have been 
driven by starvation or persecution from the poorest coun- 
tries of the East to seek their fortune in the United States. 

Before long, the smallness of their numbers will be re- 
gretted. When History surveys our epoch from afar and 
passes judgment upon it, what will she say about the 
ravages that followed the first intercourse between Europe 
and the New World? What will she say about the two- 
fold folly that led us to empty America of its natural 
population and replace it by negroes forcibly brought from 
another world ? What will she say when she records what 
these negroes have become in the United States? 

Did not Jefferson say : "I tremble for my country when 
I remember that there is a justice of God! " 

The negroes were about four million strong in the United 
States half a century ago, when they ceased to be slaves. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 359 

They now number ten millions, or more than a tenth of the 
total population of the country. They are steadily in- 
creasing and multiplying. Their mortality is high, but 
their birth rate exceeds their death rate. How is such a 
question to be settled? 

The day of reckoning is sure to come sooner or later. 
The United States are bearing the chastisement for one of 
Europe's worst crimes. In our time there can be no enslav- 
ing a nation, and still less a race, with impunity. Sooner 
or later, right has its revenge. As an example of this, we 
have the Balkan states. If Poland and Alsace are pointed 
out as contrary instances, my reply is : ''Wait and see." 

5. Inevitable Reckoning 

I can easily see the danger and complexity of the negro 
problem, but I fail to perceive how it is to be solved. The 
Americans have already moved heaven and earth in this 
cause. They abolished slavery by waging the war of 
secession, at the risk of their own existence, and, after 
such an effort, we need not despair of them. But what will 
follow ? 

Slave Trade 

From the first, the distribution of the colored folk im- 
ported into America was unequal. The negro races are 
still more varied than those into which the whites are 
divided. There are abysmal differences in the degrees of 
civilization or barbarism between them. The most docile, 
intelligent and industrious, the best blood in western 
Africa, the descendants of pastoral and agricultural peoples, 
are in Cuba and the Antilles, where, being well treated by 
the Spaniards, they are making progress. The inhuman 
policy of Napoleon I in San Domingo has nevertheless 
paralyzed this progress, to the great disadvantage of the 



360 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

negroes, of France and of civilization. The others — those 
who were imported into Louisiana and thence into the 
United States to oppose the Indians — belonged to warlike 
cannibal tribes. Spurred on by the slave dealers who waited 
on the coast, caravans — a practice that has only lately 
been stopped — made the journey, often a long one, 
to the coast, where their prisoners began a new form of 
captivity. The ''ebony wood" was thrown into the holds 
of the sailing vessels — worthy successors of the Mediter- 
ranean galleys and commanded by criminals of the worst 
type. The world can never have any conception of the 
atrocities committed on these voyages. What remained 
alive of the human cattle, on reaching the New World, was 
taken to market, cleaned and sold by auction. 

War of Secession 

I saw the stone on which slaves were put up for sale at 
New Orleans. They were then packed off in gangs, watched 
by ferocious dogs, to some part or other of the country. Those 
on French plantations were generally well treated and be- 
came family retainers — the ''good niggers" of abolitionist 
literature — until, paradoxically enough, the war of seces- 
sion liberated them without any preparatory measures and 
cast them adrift. Other negroes were set to work in factories 
or put to building and road making. They were given no 
instruction, they had nothing to which they could look 
forward, and the result was that they formed a class 
naturally inferior to the free workmen of Europe. The 
contempt entertained for them by the English and Ameri- 
cans — a characteristic to which I have already referred — 
was far from making it easier to educate them. Separated 
from the white population as they were by the suspicion 
attaching to their awe-inspiring hereditary instincts, their 
color, their ignorance, their temperament and their customs, 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 36 1 

they had literally no resource except to become brutalized. 
They were doubly in bondage — the former slaves of 
masters who were themselves degraded, and slaves of their 
animal instincts inflamed by drink and orgies. It is easy 
to understand why the European colony had an ungovern- 
able prejudice against them, amounting to a horror of 
black men, and why the whites absolutely refused to come 
into contact with them and made up their minds to use 
them Hke animals and nothing more. It is obviously diffi- 
cult to react against the consequences of such a system, 
which was fatal to masters as well as slaves. It led to 
antipathy between the two races — an antipathy that was 
not merely physical, but was the outcome of reasoning. 

Liberated, hut not Citizens 

In the South, the liberated negroes are not yet allowed to 
sit next to a white man. More than once I sat down in- 
advertently in the negro compartment of a tramcar and was 
motioned into the other by the conductor. The negroes 
have separate waiting-rooms and dining-rooms at the rail- 
road stations in the South. The colored folk are free, but 
they are not citizens. There is some explanation for the 
summary executions, which strike us as monstrous, of 
negroes by whites. Lynch law is a survival of Indian war- 
fare. The bestial nature of the crimes committed by 
drunken negroes excites not only indignation but alarm, 
owing to the poor organization of justice in so large and 
thinly populated a country. The whites, knowing them- 
selves to be in a minority, lose their heads, and, not being 
able to rely on the operation of the law, they protect them- 
selves against violence by violence of their own. The mis- 
fortune is that, unlike the Indian, the negro cannot look 
forward to ultimate salvation through intermingHng with 
the white race. Independently of the instinctive prejudice 



362 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

to which I have referred, we have to consider the danger 
to civiHzation which would result from too free inter- 
marriage. People are asking themselves whether this inter- 
mingling ought not to be moderated as much as possible, 
and this at a time when scientific discoveries will certainly 
help to make it more frequent. The effect of cutting 
through the Isthmus of Panama, like that of Suez, and 
building railroads all over Africa and Asia, must be to 
bring the races of mankind closer and closer together and 
commingle them. Emulation, and not an indiscriminate 
blending of the various races on the globe, is what is needed 
in the general interest of humanity. In the United States 
moreover, the mixture of black and white blood is consid- 
ered as giving very bad results. It is asserted that half- 
breeds, mulattos and quadroons lose the good quahties of 
the negro and take the bad qualities of the white, and this 
conviction is so strongly held that it involves social com- 
pHcations impossible to settle. There is no room for a 
child born of a white husband and a black wife. He is an 
outsider wherever he goes. He may look at hfe with 
childish anticipation and the broad grin of the darky, but 
life shuts the door in his face. No white child will play 
with him. When I denounced this treatment as cruelty, 
the reply was: ''We must beware of allowing the negro 
child to live with children whose later existence he cannot 
share. How can a little black boy be a playmate of a little 
white girl whom he can never marry, except at the risk of 
bringing other unfortunates, outcasts and pariahs into the 
world? The child of a mixed marriage has often been 
defined as a white soul confined in a black body." 

While the solution of the problem is being sought for, 
the problem is becoming more and more serious. The 
negroes are increasing and multiplying, but they are still 
foreigners amid the population of America, and, worst of 
all, they form the only foreign element that cannot be 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 363 

assimilated. Another difficulty is that the black popula- 
tion is very unequally distributed over the forty-eight 
states of the Union. In some it is almost nil, while in 
others it forms the majority. In some parts of the state of 
Alabama, it attains the proportion of seven to one. Here 
we have a people Kberated but not adopted, that will de- 
cide the fate of a state and of several states, inasmuch as 
negro suffrage is being taken into account, and finally, 
when the crisis comes, that of the entire federation. 

The Negro in a White Democracy 

Yes, the day of reckoning always comes ! but there are 
times when we seem to be paying very dear for the sins of 
our ancestors. The United States are now paying dearly 
for the crimes committed by our ''ebony- wood" dealers 
when they invented the devilish scheme of dragging the in- 
habitants of one continent away to another. At present 
they do not know what to do with the swarms of descend- 
ants of these blacks. They tried a different plan, that of 
establishing another country for the blacks — the Republic 
of Liberia, in West Africa ; but the negroes, having become 
accHmatized in America, declined to return to the other 
side of the ocean. Their reply was: "You will have to 
keep us. Here we are, and here we stay," and they have 
remained in the United States. What will be their ulti- 
mate position in that nation ? I was long inclined to despair 
of their future and of any solution of the problem, but my 
conviction was shaken, to my own great relief, by the con- 
fidence displayed by men whose high ideals remind me of 
those of the great European Liberals of former times. To 
begin with, I found myself obliged to reckon with the tre- 
mendous efforts made since the war of secession to educate 
the negroes and raise them above their former level. And 
yet, what is the use of instructing them and giving them a 



364 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

share in the general coeducation of the country if they 
are not to have the same right to existence in that country ? 
To instruct them so as to let them intermingle with the 
American race is impossible, and to exclude them from the 
life of the nation is just as impossible. What is to be done ? 
Do you propose to bring up a brotherhood of ten millions 
in enmity to eighty million Americans? 

The Americans, however, do not despair ; they never do. 
They say the worst time is over — the time that came 
immediately after emancipation. No provision was made 
for the future of the freed, and it was deplorable. What 
was to be done with a generation that had no predecessor, 
that was suddenly awakened to freedom without having 
ever exercised it, that was left to itself after having known 
no will but the masters', that was free to earn its living by 
work, although work, to their minds, had nothing honor- 
able about it and was slavery itself ? Idleness, wretchedness 
and degradation were inevitable under such conditions, and 
the consequence was that soon after their emancipation, we 
were confronted with the worst specimens of the negro 
that had ever existed. They were the sons of slaves ! 
Now, however, this generation is dying out, and the in- 
stinct of self-preservation has reasserted itself. Philan- 
thropists have come forward, as in other countries, to 
facilitate the transition, and this transition is education. 
A remarkable establishment, Tuskegee Institute, has been 
founded in Alabama by a mulatto. Dr. Booker T. Wash- 
ington, an excellent and celebrated man. This school has 
already rendered, and continues to render, services the 
value of which is steadily becoming more and more evident. 
It gives material and moral instruction to great numbers 
of colored people of both sexes, and they, in turn, spread 
their knowledge throughout the South, hitherto very 
poorly provided even with white teachers. They have 
already raised the negro level beyond all expectations 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 365 

in the course of a very few years. Negroes have developed 
a taste for education and have shown themselves worthy 
of it. They have their own doctors, lawyers, bankers, 
insurance companies and so on, managed by negroes. 
Mulattoes and negroes make excellent servants in hotels 
and private houses; and I have already mentioned the 
politeness, exactness, honesty and other quahties — quite 
a specialty and almost a monopoly — shown by negroes 
on all the railroad trains. Dr. Booker Washington is 
himself an example of the high culture of which a negro 
is capable and of the eminent services he can render the 
country. But the more one investigates the question, the 
more one discovers other points which I am not justified 
in omitting. I will confine myself to the testimony of the 
men who are best quahfied to speak. 

Sir WiUiam van Home, a Canadian justly celebrated 
for his important railroad and other enterprises in Canada 
and Cuba, summed up his opinion by telling me that the 
Americans had made the same mistake as the EngKsh, and 
had failed to realize that men, be they white, black or yel- 
low, can be made to do anything if they are well treated. 
Sir WiUiam added : ''I have employed negroes in Cuba and 
given them my utmost confidence. I have intrusted them 
with large sums of money, important messages and valu- 
able documents to convey from one end of the island to the 
other, through the dangers of forests and soKtudes. Not 
one of them has ever betrayed my confidence." This 
contemporary testimony confirms that of the noblest Eu- 
ropean explorers of Africa and Asia. Brazza never em- 
ployed any weapon but kindness. Major Marchand, and 
there are many others Hke him, crossed Africa from west 
to east with a mere handful of men. Nachtigal the Ger- 
man lived alone in the Lake Chad district. Auguste Pavie 
did the same, and for a much longer time, in the Upper 
Mekong, which was morally subjugated by his uprightness. 



366 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Confidence and kindness were justified in the person of 
Livingstone. During the thirty years he spent among the 
negroes, they protected him and loved him, so much so 
that they respected even his remains, which now speak to 
the world on their behalf from his grave in Westminster 
Abbey. 

General Leonard Wood, when governor general of Cuba, 
utiHzed his qualities of heart still more than his intelligence 
to atone for and correct the mistake made by his country- 
men. He extended negro education and founded hundreds 
and thousands of schools, increasing their number in a 
very short time from 100 to 5500. The result was im- 
mediate. 

It is a fact, as I have said, that the Cuban negroes are 
superior to those of the United States, but the Spaniards 
treated them well, while the Americans have sentenced 
them without appeal. Negroes have a strong sense of 
dignity. Lower them, and you degrade them. In Cuba 
they are remarkably faithful. Teach them, and they will 
teach one another. 

In the state of Virginia there is a negro school, the Hamp- 
ton Institute, and I shall never forget how completely my 
notions were upset when the white superintendent, Mr. 
Hollis Burke Frissell, explained the question as he under- 
stood it. Until that time I had never realized, as I do 
now, what a great piece of injustice, or rather what a great 
crime, had been committed. Mr. Frissell spoke with the 
simplicity of a philanthropist, but in the same strain as the 
moral pioneers who, before his time, helped to regenerate 
the world. He showed me the frightful condition in which 
the negroes, whom we reproach with not being like our- 
selves, have been left since the very beginning, from the 
Roman, Babylonian and Mussulman epochs of slavery. 
He declines to exclude them from the great onward march of 
humanity or to doubt that they can contribute to the gen- 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 367 

eral progress. He described the grandeur — which is not 
only possible but certain, in his opinion — of the new worlds 
that are awakening and will know nothing of excommuni- 
cation, blood-stained tyranny and systematic degradation. 
He sketched the future of the disinherited races that will 
participate in the development of the United States, 
Canada, the two Americas, Asia and finally Africa. They 
have been its victims and they will be its saviors, if we 
treat them well; he repeats "Hke children, they must be 
taught to walk." 

Numerous disciples of Booker Washington are being 
raised up in the present generation of negroes and are pre- 
paring to instruct the others. Let them but find imitators 
in our European colonies, and the problem of their organ- 
ization will be all the more simplified. The negroes' future 
will be easier in Africa than in America, because they will 
be in their natural surroundings, provided we give them 
natural development conditions that will bear comparison 
with our own. Hitherto they have been crushed not 
merely by barbarity and slavery, but by the unhealthy 
chmate in which they are compelled to hve, by their state 
of insecurity, by sickness, by poverty, and by war — al- 
ways the same cause — with no other outlook. How could 
they have developed? Their progress has been the reverse 
of ours. For centuries they have been going back while 
the whites advanced. The weakest had no refuge but 
marshes and inaccessible forests. They have come down 
to the lowest rung in the ladder of humanity, while the 
whites cUmbed upwards. Give them peace, justice and 
education, and you will see a transformation in them. Do 
not judge them by what you see of them in cities where 
they are degraded by a system that treats them as machines 
or animals. Give them a chance to cultivate such aptitude 
as they possess, and, owing first of all to education and 
then to agriculture, you will see them catch up to you 



368 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and help you. What you sow, that shall you also reap. 
To free the slave and redeem him is a good beginning, 
but to atone for the crime is the whole duty, and the 
redemption. 

At any rate, while people refuse to recognize that negroes 
possess good qualities, some use has been made of those 
qualities. I will close this summary of the arguments I 
have heard on their behalf by an incident dating back to 
the youth of an American ambassador in Paris. He told 
me that during the war of secession a young Boston officer, 
Col. Robert Gould Shaw, whose admirable monument, in 
Boston, by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens is well 
known, undertook to form a black regiment, the fifty-fourth 
Massachusetts, but found himself opposed by Northern 
sentiment, which was ready to emancipate slaves but not 
to fight on the same side with them. He persisted in his 
project, so as to prove their bravery, and he succeeded 
to such an extent that they were half of them killed, with 
himself at their head, in a bayonet charge under the walls 
and in the trenches around Fort Wagner. They claimed 
the post of honor and they had it. We have no right to 
forget these men when we talk of American idealism. 
Though we may do justice to what they have suffered and 
achieved in the past, this does not regulate their future, 
and they are still left face to face with the sad reality that, 
between them and white America, divorce is just as im- 
possible as cohabitation. The problem is not merely 
moral, social and economic ; it is political. How can two 
races, whom Nature and history have done everything to 
separate, Hve on the same soil and under the same laws, 
together yet isolated, and both constantly engaged in the 
same national work, if they are neither to love nor to hate 
each other? What will be the negro's place in a white 
democracy ? 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 369 

Injustice to he Confirmed or Atoned For 

Those skeptics who reproach us with our belief in a better 
humanity may triumph over the admission that, no matter 
what results may ever be attained, the mass of suffering 
and injustice will always exceed human powers. We see 
sons and grandsons, nephews and grand-nephews suffer in 
atonement for the sins of their ancestors. Is a curse to 
rest on a whole people, full of energy and promise, because 
of the long martyrdom inflicted for all time on the black 
race? There is no question so ominous for the future of 
the United States as the negro question. Very httle is 
said about it, — most people would like to forget it, — but 
it complicates all the other problems. With every step 
they make the Americans will come in contact with it 
and now the burden of solving it, a mighty and impossible 
feat, is placed on their shoulders. The sins of the fathers 
are visited upon the children. They cannot escape it; 
every day that passes brings the obligation to choose 
whether they will add to injustice or make amends for it. 
No one dreams of the former course, which would mean 
making the situation still worse. As for the second, no 
one can see how it is to be done. 

Americans have Faith 

I remember the violent dislike of the Americans at Seattle 
to what they called the unbearable burden of the old ques- 
tions bequeathed by old Europe. They had come in search 
of a clear field where there would be nothing to interfere 
with their youthful enterprises. They were in a hurry to 
escape from these questions and establish their new scheme 
of existence. They had made their way from the East as 
far as possible westward until they reached the Pacific and 
the extremity of the New World. It was all in vain, and 

2B 



37© AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

they are now discovering that turning your back on it 
does not dispose of a question. It pursues you. The only 
course is to retrace one's steps, face the difficulty and join 
with the rest of the country, from all points of the circum- 
ference as far as the center, in trying to solve the problem ; 
to search in every direction, to use all one's ingenuity to 
make a comprehensive survey from the summit of an ideal 
eminence that grows higher every day; and by the exer- 
cise of reason, determination and good will, the Americans 
will find what they seek, because they want to Hve, because 
they have faith. 

6. Religion and Church Works. Is it Dying Out or 

Modernized ? 

Americans are believers. This does not mean that 
they are generally devout and pious, and still less does 
it imply renunciation. It is the kind of youthful, en- 
thusiastic behef that disposes of the worst difficulties, 
like a great and hearty effort made after a sound sleep. 
It implies moral and physical energy stimulated by ob- 
stacles and finding causes for action in even the contradic- 
tions of Nature. It is spring born of winter; it is behef 
in the destiny of humanity as an integral part of creation. 

Is this behef of a religious nature? Mistakes on this 
point are quite possible. Americans discuss religious 
questions very httle, especially with a Frenchman. They 
have a horror of arguments about reUgion and especially 
of sarcasms of the kind dear to the disciples of Voltaire. 
Religion is one of those reserved territories which a foreigner 
might suppose to be neglected, but on which Americans 
do not like intruders to stray with religious passions from 
another country or another age. Rehgion, whether prac- 
ticed or not, is, to the American mind, doubly entitled to 
respect, both on account of its moral tendency and its 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 37 1 

past. Whatever may have been its faihngs, it is bound 
up with the history of the United States, in which country 
it has been, and still is, an element of civilization. This 
is sufficient to insure its not being discussed hghtly. The 
church was the first source and means of human associa- 
tion ; it was born of the need that men feel more than ever 
— and Americans perhaps still more than the rest — of 
coming together on days of rejoicing and days of sorrow, 
to unite for good and against evil, to sing, to weep — to hope 
in spite of everything and to give one another mutual 
support. It is easy to say that religion is dying out in 
the United States, but I am not at all sure of this. I 
take no account of external appearances, such as the 
number and the wealth of certain churches (at any rate 
those in large cities), respect for all forms of belief and 
religious observances that impress a Frenchman, such as 
the grace said at the beginning of a meal, and such frequent 
expressions as ''thank God," ''please God," "God bless 
you " and so on ; and I observe that, as a matter of fact, 
the attendance at church is becoming smaller and smaller. 
Few men go there, the proportion being one man to ten 
women and children. In church, the priest can no longer 
talk about the devil or hell or an avenging Providence, 
neither can he discuss Paradise and future rewards, or 
put forward dogmas, or say mass in Latin, or hypnotize 
himself by the beliefs of a past which had nothing to do 
with the country. All this kind of thing is archaic and 
out of date, to say the least. We are far removed from 
the time when the constitution of Massachusetts provided 
(Article 2) that "no traveler, carter or other person shall 
go about on Sunday, under penalty of fine"; and, in 
Article 4, that "any one who, being in good health and 
without good and sufficient reason, fails to take part in 
public worship for three months, shall be fined ten shillings" 
(1827-1828). It is true that these laws, which were very 



372 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

much like those of the other states, were seldom enforced ; 
though Tocqueville wrote in 1835: "Sunday observance 
is what strikes the stranger more than anything else." 
"After Saturday evening/' he adds, "there is a general 
state of lethargy.'' 

Nowadays, we find the president of Harvard University 
mentioning, as a proof of great progress, that in 1886 it 
was at last decided that students should not be required 
to attend service. I cannot, however, deduce from these 
changes that religion is dying out; they impress me, on 
the contrary, as healthy signs, because the church is be- 
coming modernized. The old rule, "immobilis in mobile,''^ 
cannot be followed in America, where immobility spells 
death. To keep aHve, the churches, together with the 
entire population of the United States, are looking for new 
fields of acti\dty, and are finding them. Their diversity, 
which some interpret as weakness, is their strength, and it is 
one of the national forces. A single religion would soon be in 
conflict with the public authorities, as is the case in France, 
Italy and Spain. The government of souls would try to en- 
croach on the government of men, and these would rise in 
revolt. There are many religions that cannot be combative. 
The Americans have neither time nor men to waste in fruit- 
less disputes. They want churches that will combine to help 
them, and that combination is effected. The churches sub- 
mit to the law of competition and profit by it. They are 
rivals in a spirit of good intentions and not of hate. They 
share in the great national work, and are associates in- 
stead of enemies. What they each lose individually by this 
community of action they gain in vitality and popularity. 
Each grows in proportion to its own self-effacement. 

Religion, which looks as if it were dying out, is thus 
undergoing a process of evolution, like everything else. 
It could not be otherwise. The American religion is a 
combination of colonial religions ; that is to say, a mosaic 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 373 

of religions which have been transplanted or improvised; 
in the whirl of city life or the solitude of agricultural es- 
tates, for the use of immigrants from every quarter of the 
globe. As these immigrants gave up everything to leave 
their own countries, who can pretend to be able to bring 
them back to a copy of the church that was once theirs? 
They are all more or less merged in the whole, and how 
are they to be separated? It might perhaps be done in a 
great city, but not elsewhere. The immigrants are not 
very particular, and they are content with the house or 
church that shelters them. They return to life and, at 
the same time, to primitive religion. Later on, when 
these centers of population develop into cities and states, 
they are brought into closer union by their mutual weak- 
ness; they enter the federation of the United States, and 
their churches are obliged to follow their example. This 
is true even of the Catholics. They remember their origin. 
It is even considered at Rome that they remember it only 
too well, and that is why, it is said, Mgr. Ireland, Arch- 
bishop of St. Paul, has never been made a cardinal. They 
readily accept rapprochements in which their great num- 
ber and the unity with which they act can insure their 
preeminence. We must not forget that, though they come 
closer, they do not lose their individuality — and here this 
is true of all these intermingled religions — and they do 
not even mix together among themselves. You can hear 
an Irish Catholic exclaim with cheerful contempt, when 
he sees a crowd of Sicilians or Maltese Catholics: ''And 
those are the fellows that make Popes!" But these 
differences do not prevent a general agreement in the life 
of America. 

Competition in Well-doing 

The understanding among the churches is more or less 
closely following, whether they like it or not, the federation 



374 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

of the United States. We cannot yet say that the federa- 
tion stage has been reached, but there is association, both 
frequent and occasional, and competition to see which will 
do the most good and make itself the most useful to the 
public. Every church holds that the better world is here, 
in the new and not the old hemisphere, and still less in a 
future life! Religion was made for man and not man for 
religion. Man is turning his back on the past. He is all 
for the present and the future. Religion must march with 
him if it is to be anything more than a remembrance. It 
is throwing aside its impedimenta, and gradually giving up 
its dogmas, credos and uncompromising attitude. When 
the Congress of Religions met at Chicago, a general formula 
of belief that would arouse the least possible objection had to 
be found, and it can be summed up in one word ''useful- 
ness." The church makes itself useful, first and foremost, 
and, as the great and general need is education, it consti- 
tutes itself a school. It has its Sunday schools, where it 
shows children how to sing, to teach, to know and love one 
another ; it brings parents together at childrens' gatherings ; 
it organizes, on its own premises, the family festivals for 
which the heart longs in exile; and the child, being the 
future of the country, becomes the real object of its cult. 
The church, however, does not monopolize the child and 
does not contend with city or college for him. This would 
involve stopping, seeking to dominate, and losing the 
way. The church has something better to do. It takes 
hold of the most urgent work, such as charitable and social 
improvement, organizations and moral teaching. It is 
most interesting and encouraging to observe the suc- 
cessful way in which the church assumes a great many and 
varied forms, and transforms itself into a club, a society 
and even a theater if need be. Any effort towards 
better things is religion. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 375 



Religion of Good 



How could a religion, made up of so many religions that 
cooperate in the great melting together of races, languages 
and dogmas, fail to be welcome in a new country? The 
force of circumstances has brought the infinite variety of 
churches, like the universities, into accord. Conflict 
among them would be chaos, but tolerance is salvation. 
It is true that tolerance in this sphere may open the door 
to a great many eccentricities and abuses, but we must 
take into account the principle of never discouraging initia- 
tive and of letting the good sense of the pubhc and the 
general law of competition weed out the bad from the good. 
We must also bear in mind that it is necessary to make the 
transitions gradual. Religions are not born promiscuously, 
they correspond to moral and material needs, and, so long 
as these needs continue, the religions maintain their title 
to existence. We have seen an instance of this with the 
Mormons, where polygamy remains, as a matter of fact, 
justified, by custom if not by law, through the necessity 
of obtaining help in the cultivation of waste lands. In 
other parts of the country, various forms of doctrine have 
tried their luck. Some have succeeded, like the Free- 
masons, and others have failed after undergoing a test 
which, in the United States, is final but free and generally 
fruitful. Communism is one instance, and others are 
supplied by Owenism, the Icarian colonies and the Fouri- 

erists. 

I have found rich and flourishing churches all over the 
United States and even in Europe, especially in England, 
which belong to a new sect, the Christian Science religion, 
founded by Mrs. Eddy. It has its cathedral at Boston, 
where a large part of the population belongs to it ; and it 
has its own Bible, carried by a great many passengers, 
especially the ladies, on board Atlantic liners. It is per- 



376 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

haps the only religion that excites serious criticism, — not 
so much among other churches as in the country at large, — 
because, in one sense, it evades the common law. It does 
not confine itself to competing with the other churches in 
patriotic ardor ; it competes with science, physicians and 
surgeons. The enormous progress made by this special 
sect alarms a great many Americans, while others, on 
the contrary, are delighted with it. I will discuss it im- 
partially as a really impressive sign of the present state 
of the American mind, before attempting to define what 
seems to me to be the religious spirit — the religion of the 
future in the United States. 

Christian Scientists. Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy 

The Christian Scientists are propagating their ideas all 
over the United States with a vigor that produces a very 
singular mixture of enthusiastic belief and genuine opposi- 
tion. As we know, Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, who died in 
Boston two years ago, made an incalculable and steadily 
increasing number of proselytes during her lifetime. Her 
prestige was incredible but can be understood on looking 
at her portrait, which shows noble and regular features 
and an expression of majestic gentleness combined with 
intensity. All that is wanting in her portraits is a halo. 
Her religion was conceived not merely as moral guidance, 
but as a physical cure and a form of regular treatment — 
the religion of health, of the mind and the body. This is 
carried to such a point that many Christian Scientists 
have been prosecuted for illegally giving medical advice. 
A great many people assert that they have been almost 
miraculously cured of their ills simply by observing the 
principles of Christian Science. This science in reality 
consists of strength of mind, evenness of temperament, 
confidence and even cheerfulness purposely used against 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 377 

discouragement and depression — preeminently an Anglo- 
American complaint. Suppose you are nervous, spiritless 
and melancholy ; do not send for a doctor but for a disci- 
ple of Mrs. Eddy. He or she will come and talk to you, 
stimulate your moral energy, and persuade you that all 
your troubles are in your imagination and loss of control 
over yourself, and that you will soon be cured. Such is the 
problem, and it is easy to imagine what the universities 
think of it and the abuses to which the application of 
Christian Science can give rise. 

In company with an American senator, I attended a 
Christian Science meeting in 1907, under the presidency 
of Hayne Davis, an apostle of the new religion, and we 
spoke in one of their principal churches. It was one of 
the bright and sumptuous places of worship they have 
in every city in the United States, and generally several 
in each city. The scene was something like a drawing- 
room on the day of a garden party. The women were 
beautifully dressed and smiling, and all knew one another, 
Kke members of a large club. The church was profusely 
decorated with plants and flowers, and every one joined 
in the singing led by the choir and organ. Every one 
stopped to talk on leaving the church after the service. 
The men, who seemed very quiet, spoke even more gently 
than the women. It was like what one sees outside one 
of our fashionable churches after an Easter confirmation 
service. Satisfaction and joy shone in every face. 

This determination to beautify Hfe and to ignore or 
annihilate its difficulties by combination, serenity and 
steady effort is extended by Christian Scientists from 
individual existences to those of famihes and of the whole 
nation. I have heard more than one American express 
uneasiness as to what may result from this excessive sacri- 
ficing of the individual to a fixed principle and wrenching 
him from the influence of physical, family and social 



378 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

trouble. "Christian Scientists," I am told, "are one of 
those associations of mystics of which history records many 
instances. It is an alarming form of fanaticism, because 
their contempt for material bonds extends from the body 
to all obligations, including marriage and family ties. 
It calls souls out of their carnal abodes and husbands and 
wives from their homes." 

The Christian Scientists are none the less ardent patriots. 
They approve of building dreadnoughts and strengthening 
the American fleet ; but at the same time they are con- 
stantly engaged in contributing to increase public wealth 
(thereby helping the cause of peace) in all parts of the 
country, as well as to preserve the country's natural beau- 
ties and develop its resources. But for the dreadnoughts 
and the medical question, every one could approve of their 
principles. They take great pains to stimulate economic 
emulation all over the country. They encourage not only 
individuals but cities and states to believe in themselves, 
their future and their ultimate success. They have under- 
taken to develop public confidence. 

Mind Cures 

We need not be surprised if such an undertaking appeals 
to a great many sincere people in a country in which every 
one wants to use his powers to the best advantage. I 
remember hearing Buffalo Bill, in the middle of his camp, 
explain his extraordinary youthfulness and vigor by a few 
words which he repeated with evident satisfaction. "It 
is in the mind, " he said ; "it is in the mind." 

. Strangely enough, after having felt merely amused by 
this remarkable display of confidence, I began to feel less 
sure of myself and to think that, after all, there must 
be something useful in Christian Science for their churches 
to increase to such an extent in the United States and 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 379 

abroad. This is how, I confess, my skepticism was shaken. 
One day I was admiring a very fine church in one of the 
handsomest cities of California. With me was an Ameri- 
can — an excellent business man, very intelligent and not 
at all credulous. When I expressed my surprise, he told 
me that this fine church was not the only one the Christian 
Scientists had built in the city. There was another, he 
said, not far away, even finer and with quite as large a 
congregation. There was nothing ironical about his re- 
marks, and when I asked for further information, he 
continued in the same tone, with perhaps a shade of de- 
pression in his voice : 

''There can be no doubt that those churches are useful. 
If the Christian Scientists try to persuade me, when I have 
broken my leg, that the fracture is purely imaginary, or 
that a contagious disease among my children should be 
treated with contempt, they are ridiculous and ought to 
be prosecuted as quacks of the most dangerous kind; 
but one must not judge a system by the abuses that arise 
from it. A great many women in this country are imagi- 
nary invalids, and only imagination can cure them." 

This gave me food for thought, and I was at once re- 
minded of what MoHere wrote. Perhaps Christian Science 
is a form of reaction against the ineffectiveness of medical 
treatment in an immense, new country with a scattered 
population, or against the practice of carrying out surgical 
operations on the slightest provocation. The history of 
Mrs. Eddy herself throws light on the matter. There 
was nothing in her early Hfe to suggest that she would one 
day be a sort of apostle. A mother, she became a widow 
and married again, but was always an invalid. She was 
then living in the state of Maine, and failing to obtain 
rehef from medicines, she consulted Dr. Phineas Quimby, 
who was a pupil of Charles Poyen and, consequently, a 
disciple of our Nancy school in France. After having 



380 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

suffered for many years from a disease of the spinal column 
supposed to be incurable, she was restored to health in 
1862 by Dr. Quimby's magnetism or mesmerism. This 
was her road to Damascus. It was the starting point of 
the religion whose Bible she wrote and disseminated so 
thoroughly. 

As for the Nancy school, it has extended in Europe and 
has its mind-cure clinic in Paris, where Dr. Berillon carries 
on the work of Liebault and Bernheim, who were considered 
by the faculty itself as savants of high standing. They 
were, in fact, savants. In this lies all the difference, and 
it is very great. A great many sensible people in France 
make fun of the abuses and weaknesses of the medical 
profession and its Latin and Greek terminology, and we 
still hear it said that ''all that the doctors have done to 
cure a cold is to call it a coryza." The doctors themselves 
admit that the mind-cure system is very useful. It is 
now accepted as a scientific principle and forms a part 
of curative science. It is not so in the United States, at 
any rate at present, for it is quite possible that the Christian 
Scientist healers will take to passing their medical examina- 
tions, and then their position will be unassailable. This 
point, however, has not been reached. At present there 
is nothing religious about the mind cure in France, where 
it is a branch of scientific progress. In the United States 
it belongs to quackery and mysticism^ also under the 
head of progress, which is quite intelligible. 

When the Americans originally established themselves 
in the country, they were compelled, nine times out of ten, 
to do without doctors, but they none the less think a great 
deal about their health. It is quite a common thing here 
for people to have themselves operated upon for appen- 
dicitis before starting on a journey, simply as a precaution. 
During one of my last visits to the United States, shortly 
before the king of England's coronation, there was a great 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 38 1 

deal in the newspapers about an American great lady, the 
young wife of an English lord, who had had herself operated 
upon in advance, so as to make sure of not missing the 
celebrations in London. 

We should observe the importance attached in the 
United States to the prevention of disease by diet, fresh 
air, change and prohibition, that is to say, forbidding the 
use of any stimulant. We must not forget that, in some 
houses, the daily bill of fare is drawn up by a speciahst 
who has made a special study of the nutritive values of 
foods and who is called "dietitian." 

The Christian Science Monitor 

With physicians either too scarce or inefficient, and sur- 
geons too enthusiastic, the Christian Scientists prosper 
greatly throughout the country, although they are often at- 
tacked and prosecuted individually. They carry on their 
operations all over the forty-eight states, and their center is 
at Boston, where Mrs. Eddy founded her church, or rather 
her cathedral, which is constantly being enlarged. Nothing 
escapes them. They have adepts who follow everything 
that goes on and is worth notice, and who act as corre- 
spondents of their organ, the Christian Science Monitor, 
This paper is published at Boston, in a splendid building 
close to the cathedral. It is not only a good but an excep- 
tionally well- edited journal. Its articles on local and general 
topics are very well done. The propagation of Christian 
Science ideas is only lightly touched upon, while there is 
a large amount of news so edited as to be interesting and 
useful to every city, state and organization. This news- 
paper was mentioned to me as one of the best in the United 
States by university friends of mine, who were not Christian 
Scientists themselves, and I have often found myself in a 
position to confirm their opinion. The Monitor does not 



382 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

confine itself to the states of the union, but publishes an 
international edition, and has voluntary correspondents 
all over the world. I visited its offices, about the finest 
I have ever seen. One of the directors explained the 
policy — a correct one — of the paper as laid down in its 
entirety by Mrs. Eddy : '' 'Nothing sensational, no horrors 
and no tragedies; do exactly the opposite of other news- 
papers; try to make your readers peaceful and happy 
instead of crazy.' As an instance, while all the other 
papers described the terrible scenes that occurred during 
the wreck of the Titanic, we gave prominence to every 
instance of courage, self-denial, heroism and religious 
faith — in short, everything that might be elevating and 
enHghtening to our readers. ' Tell them about the good 
that is done ' is our motto. The result is that what our 
Monitor loses in local news it gains in extent and depth. 
It finds its way everywhere, even to the East Indies, and 
the reader does not care whether the number he has before 
him is old or new, because the paper, not being sensational, 
is always interesting. It is, moreover, without prejudice ; 
we never discuss religion and do not insert any doubtful 
advertisements. We give one page to every great country, 
such as England, France or South America ; another page 
to subjects, not of the day, but of the present time, of 
economic and social interest; and an illustrated page to 
sport, fashions, etc. We let the reader follow whatever 
political ideas he prefers. We are neither for nor against 
Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Taft or Mr. Wilson. We give 
speeches, facts and figures as correctly as possible, so as 
always to gain the reader's confidence rather than appeal 
to his emotions. The result is that we offend no one and 
interest every one. Our paper is really a daily illustrated 
magazine — an independent family journal designed to 
propagate physical and moral hygiene. We send corre- 
spondents to centers where the truth is being withheld or 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 383 

concealed by political or financial influence, notably 
Persia and Turkey, and we always end by reaping our 
reward. The public is grateful for what we do, and sup- 
ports us. As you can see by our outward indications of 
progress, this is a very good business proposition. We 
make money by exploiting good instead of evil, and our 
circulation is increasing all the time, in spite of all gloomy 
predictions." 

The Cathedral 

As for the cathedral, which I visited, it is quite a little 
world in itself. It contains a church and a hall for concerts 
and lectures, with excellently arranged massive mahogany 
seats, giving plenty of room for an audience of five thousand 
to sit comfortably. On every hand are signs of order, 
discipline and good organization. Above a very large 
platform rises a huge organ, and several inscriptions from 
Mrs. Eddy's Bible are carved on the stone wall. One, 
the most characteristic, is: ''Never breathe an immoral 
atmosphere except to purify it" (p. 452, line 14). 

It is a great surprise to find such a cathedral with such 
a newspaper next door, in the heart of American ideahsm, 
intellectualism and progress, in the same city as the vener- 
ated Harvard University and so many historic churches 
(many of which are less wealthy), especially as Boston is 
making progress, extending in all directions, adding new 
features appropriate to a great city, and improving those 
already existing, enlarging its harbor and even reclaiming 
land from the sea, Kke the Dutch polders, as if there were 
no more territory available in the New World. But why 
cite Boston alone? Have I not observed the same eclec- 
ticism and the same toleration in all the universities, and 
seen the Christian Science paper read even in medical 
schools? I expressed my astonishment to one of my best 
friends, formerly president of a very large university, a 



384 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

strong Presbyterian and not by any means a Christian 
Scientist, the weight and authority of whose opinions 
entitle him to the utmost respect. He made no reply, 
but nodded his head, and his wife, who fully shares in his 
beliefs and work, merely remarked: "They do good. 
One of our relations was so ill that there were never enough 
of us to look after her. She was cured by the Christian 
Scientists, and now she looks after all the others." 

Union of Religions 

I have dwelt at some length on the success achieved by 
a religion which, in the opinion of many Americans, is 
not a religion at all. They beheve that, sooner or later, 
it will come into conflict with education and science in 
the United States and Europe, and will place pubKc senti- 
ment and the American government in a quandary. My 
object is to show the extent to which tolerance is carried 
towards churches as well as universities ; but it is obvious 
that we must not judge the American churches as a whole 
by exceptions or accidental circumstances, and we will 
limit ourselves to their general tendency towards trans- 
formation. 

The objection may be made that a religion designed for 
service, for curing bodily ailments and helping to colonize 
is not a religion at all, but a combination of philanthropic 
and temperance societies, a registry ofSce and a school of 
social morals — in short, a utilitarian enterprise and not 
a religion. The meaning of words need not take up our 
time; we are in a new country, where people have not 
always had the time, the means or the desire to form church- 
going communities. We must not forget that, not only is 
there a great scarcity of school teachers all over the country, 
but it is still harder, especially in the South, to find priests 
and ministers. Mgr. Ireland sends to Europe for his 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 385 

clergy, and the seminary he founded at St. Paul is excep- 
tional. These new conditions, added to the difficulty of 
communications over great distances, and scarcity of 
resources, compel the churches to rejuvenate religion. 
Otherwise religion will die out altogether; and, to re- 
juvenate it, all possible measures are tried. Churches 
advertise, Hke theaters, in the newspapers. They utiKze 
everything that can attract the pubHc decently. These 
are rough-and-ready methods. America is not the only 
country to use them. The Salvation Army scandaHzed 
Europe by its bands and its noisy way of getting at the 
working classes, among whom it does a great deal of good, 
and this, after all, is the main point and the object aimed 
at. Even in New York, teachers come forward volun- 
tarily to make up the inadequacy of the churches, and 
their action is generally approved. In 1907, I was asked 
by Dr. Adler to speak, one Sunday morning, to the Ethical 
Culture Society which he founded and which has developed 
so brilliantly. I was taken to a very large hall that might 
have been either a theater or a place of worship. I felt 
as if I were in a church, because there was just the same 
religious fervor, and the same appeals were made to the 
spirit of self-sacrifice in all its forms. It is not at all easy 
to define the boundary between secular morality and re- 
ligion in the United States. 

Does this mean that the churches are giving up religion 
so as to be able to keep their supporters? Not at all. 
They all more or less derive their inspiration from the same 
scruple, and this scruple is a religious one. They see 
that Americans take nothing for granted, and they feel 
that they cannot escape the common lot if they adhere 
too closely to the past. They avoid repudiation, but they 
say as little as possible about beliefs "of human invention" 
that are too open to discussion, although these beliefs once 
led to considerable shedding of ink and blood. They know 

2C 



386 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

that the faithful are more than indifferent to these mysteries, 
which would end, if forced upon them, by making them into 
unbelievers, and the churches are accordingly modernizing 
religion. They do it more or less cautiously, but it has 
become a rule to be ignored only under penalty of breaking 
up the congregation. ^'The mystery of the Holy Trinity/' 
said Bishop Phillips Brooks, "simply appears insignificant 
in comparison with the enormous amount of moral and 
social work to be done by the American churches. Let 
every one enjoy his liberty and his own beliefs ; the essential 
thing is what the church can do for its neighbors and the 
country." We may go still further and say that the re- 
ligious scruple to which I have referred is not merely pru- 
dent and negative. It is wise and modest ; it implies 
fear of giving an unsatisfactory definition to the indefinable. 
Is it not as futile to define God as to deny His existence? 
This aversion to incursions into the unknowable is a con- 
scious reversion to humility and a step to all the concessions 
that are possible on the part of the churches. How can 
we try to define God, to imagine Him and to bring Him 
within the narrow limits of our conceptions? Why make 
distinctions between God and His works? We have not 
yet discovered all the earth. What do we know about the 
universe and creation? And yet we claim to be able to 
define the Creator ! We have wasted our energies for 
centuries in absurd and tragic disputes over our pretentious 
attempts to define the Creator. 

The Spirit of the French Revolution 

The spirit of the French Revolution and the conceptions 
of Jean Jacques Rousseau are more afive in the United 
States than in France. The Americans know nothing 
about them but have been brought up on them. They do 
not talk about a ''supreme Being," neither do they say, 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 387 

"Let US enlarge God" — a formula to which they would 
object as too narrow ; but they refuse to belittle Him. 
What we take for indifference on their part is a new am- 
bition which should form a cKmax to all their other am- 
bitions — that of completing their political by their rehgious 
independence, of liberating themselves from the past in 
the sphere of religion as in all other spheres of thought, 
and of Hberating God. They are broadening their con- 
sciences. They extend their tolerance to religious, moral 
and social questions, and the first settle themselves auto- 
matically when the two others are disposed of. The 
revolutionary formula "Neither God nor master" has no 
meaning in America, because the church does not exer- 
cise any domination. That admirable man Dr. Edward 
Everett Hale, who, Kke many others, is more or less con- 
sciously a disciple of Fourier, exclaimed at Lake Mohonk : 
"We have burst our bonds and freed ourselves politically 
and religiously. Henceforth man will solve the great 
problems of his life with his own conscience and with no 
one between him and his Creator. The desire of our 
country was to be the cradle of the freest, the most uni- 
versal and the most personal of religions, and it is. We 
have no state religion. Every one of us looks at the sky 
above him, believing that in it exists an infinite Being, his 
Father and his Friend, with whom he is in direct intercourse. 
" But this Father and Friend, though invisible and un- 
knowable, manifests Himself in His works. Channing, 
referring to the beauties of Nature in his youth, says : 
' I have tasted the greatest joy on earth — that of com- 
munion with the works of God ' ; and it was in the name 
of this universal independent American religion that he 
claimed for his country the honor of directing all the 
humanitarian movements of our time. What are we? 
the children and grandchildren of the Englishmen, French- 
men, Germans and Scandinavians, who populated our 



388 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

continent? We are brothers, and we should unite with 
one voice against the evil that threatens us all." 

. The Pioneer of Pioneers 

We thus see that Americans, far from giving up religion, 
consider it a source of new ideas and place it in the highest 
possible position. They are freeing it from its egotistical 
aims. To an American Christian — who is not very far 
removed from an IsraeHte in this respect, — the main 
thing is not to prepare for a future state but to make 
good use of the present. We can conceive all the churches, 
including even the synagogues, agreeing in respect for 
Christ. The Jews themselves say He was one of them- 
selves, and Americans regard Christ as the highest ideal for 
the future social state to the coming of which they are en- 
deavoring to contribute. Christ refused to define Himself, 
and confined Himself to setting the example and inculcating 
just those virtues of which Americans feel the need : f or- 
getfulness of self, the love of one's fellow men, and the cult 
of true justice. Christ it is who shows us the road to higher 
things through the sacrifice of ourselves. He is the greatest 
of all examples and the pioneer of pioneers. 

Sentiment and Reason 

In this state of mind — natural with men who left their 
homes to escape from our Byzantine controversies and to 
seek for the ''kingdom which is not of this world" beyond 
the Hmits of Europe — the churches can no more be hostile 
to one another than they can be idle. They reconcile 
sentiment and reason. 

Indifference to Dogma 

As soon as they voluntarily give up all supernatural 
authority and adopt the well-known formula ''Indifference 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 389 

to dogma is our only dogma," as soon as they cease to dis- 
cuss their points of difference and allow their teaching and 
their actions to have the same meaning, how can we fail 
to see the beginning, not of fusion into one mass, I repeat, 
but of union for them all. It is a more or less slow process 
of evolution, but nothing can interfere with it except a 
stoppage in the progress of the United States. If things 
continue in their present course, and if Americans pursue 
their development in unity and peace, they will ultimately set 
Europe a twofold example of political and religious federa- 
tion. Channing expected France to give birth to the religion 
of the future, but we have no clear field for it, and it will be 
gradually evolved in the United States for our descendants. 
This is a task that is quite worthy to excite the enthusiasm 
of so young a nation, and it will set the climax to that 
nation's economic and political mission if it succeeds in 
escaping the madness born of ambition, if it does not lose 
the consciousness of its destiny, if it chooses its represen- 
tatives wisely, and if it compels its government to open 
up new paths and turn aside from the ruts into which we 
have fallen. 

Unitarians 

The number of men who are paving the way for this 
rehgion of the future by their example and precept is in- 
calculable. They belong to a lineage that goes back to 
the early Puritans and Methodists and was humanized by 
the breath of Unitarianism. This high-minded sect ap- 
pears to have died out. Why? Because it has accom- 
plished its purpose, which was to penetrate the others and 
bring them together — a fine, disinterested achievement 
of which scarcely any trace is left. To act, create and 
fight for one's principles is a joy, a defight and a glory; 
but to reconcile others and their ambitions is a thankless 
task and therefore the grandest of all tasks. It is commonly 



390 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

said that the Unitarians never made any progress except 
among other churches. I can quite beheve it, seeing that 
they came out of their own. The pilot puts out in his 
frail bark, in spite of darkness, storm and reefs close at 
hand, to bring the great mail steamer into port, but he gets 
no credit for it. We simply accept the fact that the vessel 
has arrived safely. It is the same with the Unitarians. 
History will do them justice. I can but express my admira- 
tion for their disinterested work of peacemaking and general 
organization, so largely imbued with French influence. This 
work will be misunderstood and hampered, but will none the 
less be accompHshed. I have seen an equally chimerical 
enterprise succeed — at the Hague Congress in 1899 and 
1907. 

Rival Gods 

For the first time perhaps, official representatives of all 
the states in the world met, in pursuance of a purely ideal 
purpose, to begin the task of drawing up a declaration of 
the duties of man, his rights having been already laid 
down. There were Europeans, Americans, Asiatics and 
delegates of every race and rehgion, each having its own 
Church, its churches and its Deity. No harmony was 
possible among the advocates of these rival deities, except 
through self-effacement in one great and common under- 
taking, or through cooperation. But this cooperation was 
compHcated by mistrust and unconfessed designs, as well as 
by temporal and not very moral ideas. Nevertheless, the 
conception that it was possible to render humanity a great 
service began to predominate over considerations of a less 
elevated kind. The mere ambition to render this service 
caused all these representatives of more or less hostile 
races and religions to set to work and, after weeks and 
months of heated debates, to produce a joint creation, a 
nucleus of international justice. When the right time 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 39 1 

comes, it will not be any more difficult to bring represen- 
tatives of all beliefs into agreement over the nucleus of a 
system of morality common to every religion in the world. 
This form of progress will simply be the outcome of all the 
others realized in our time. It will be to the honor of 
Americans to have contributed to it. 

I am under no delusion when I say, as the result of years 
of observation, that Americans have a growing tendency 
to devote themselves, in a broader and broader spirit of 
altruism, to public movements that will serve as a Hnk to 
bind more and more closely together all men, all nations 
and all churches. 

The uses of religion interest them more than reHgion 
itself and are, in their eyes, nothing but a reversion to the 
true Christian spirit. Is this an unconscious reversion? 
If so, it will be all the more active. No thoughtful man 
or woman can Hve in America without feeling pity for the 
schisms prevailing in the Old World and the conclusion is 
obvious. 

Phillips Brooks 

^ At Boston I paid a visit to the house of Phillips Brooks, 
Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Massachu- 
setts, who died at Boston Jan. 23, 1893. His admirers 
and disciples, in their desire to do due honor to his memory, 
built, not a church, but a house, the "Phillips Brooks 
House," a club or center for the maintenance of mutual 
assistance and faith, where the Harvard University students 
meet together with any one willing to work with them. 
What is this work ? It consists of keeping PhilHps Brooks's 
ideals alive and spreading their beneficent contagion, of 
training people in the service of good causes, especially 
the most thankless. A system of rehef for children and 
the poor is in process of elaboration in this little house. 
Here also arrangements are made to look after the thousands 



392 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

of emigrants who land at Boston on their way to various 
parts of the country. They must be prevented from falhng 
into bad hands and from being exploited and wrongly ad- 
vised. It is a piece of great good fortune for them to have 
so many unexpected friends, guides and correspondents. 
Phillips Brooks set the example of these services during 
his Hfetime. He advocated them, and he addressed himself 
to young minds, to which he opened out endless horizons 
of good works. To this simpHfied form of religion he de- 
voted, with all the force of his great nature, the latter part 
of his life. 

Like Phillips Brooks, there are many in Europe who 
deserve our admiration. Innumerable are our religious 
and secular saints, but they have been hampered. The 
Catholic rehgion, especially in France, has priests who 
are superior to those of other countries, but the church 
will not allow them to be modern. She paralyzes them 
— which is a very different thing ; and she condemned 
Lamennais. Had Father Hyacinthe Loyson lived in the 
United States, he would have died glorious. Phillips 
Brooks was the ideal of the good shepherd and the good 
American citizen. When he was to speak, the whole city 
came to hear him, and he could appeal to the whole city. 
He inspired so much respect among the various denomina- 
tions that they were all represented at his funeral, and on 
that day, all the church bells tolled in unison. When a com- 
mittee was formed in Boston, a few years after his death, 
to build the house I afterwards visited, contributions came 
in from all sides. Episcopahans, Unitarians, Orthodox- 
believers, Congregationalists, Methodists, Swedenborgians 
and Catholics were at one in trying to perpetuate his in- 
fluence and his spirit and to prepare for the religion of the 
future. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 



The Religion of the Future 



393 



Channing believed that to France would fall the task of 
founding the religion of the future. In his time it was 
already said that rehgion was dying out in France, but 
he took account of the still existing moral and rehgious 
sentiment that finds its expression in work and philanthropy. 
He also judged France by the good she had accomplished. 
He rehed on her because she had so often proved herself 
worthy and so often stood on the brink of the precipice, 
risking her Hberty, her blood, her future and even her 
Ufe for her ideal of justice and liberty. He recognized 
her as entitled to seniority in the great family of civiHzing 
nations, and he recognized all the virtues of maligned 
France, because she remained true to her name, as Ruskin 
said; because she is frank, because her inward rehgion, 
her really national rehgion, is the spirit of fraternity. 
But he did not take into account the hold estabhshed by 
age-long systems of domination on this spirit of brother- 
hood, neither did he reckon what it had to suffer or the 
disappointments it encountered ; and finally, what he took 
to be moral bankruptcy was a revolt of the French rehgious 
spirit, not so much against rehgion itseh as against its 
abuses. A great many Americans make the same mistake, 
and the Cathohcs in particular have exaggerated it so far 
as to be unjust. The Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, 
Mgr. Gibbons, usually a hberal-minded man, pubhcly 
condemned this revolt of French vitahty at the time of the 
debate on our laws relating to the rehgious congregations 
and the separation of church and state. He gave the 
signal to his priests to pronounce an anathema, which was 
taken up by fifteen milhon Cathohcs, against RepubHcan 
France. It was unjust, to begin with, it was mistaken 
and it was imprudent; for, although this happened only 
a few years ago, the truth is already becoming evident. 



394 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The responsibility of the persecutions with which France 
was reproached, although she was merely defending herself, 
is beginning to fall on the Holy See. The Republic is all 
the greater for the attacks she had to face in order to save 
her principles, which are exactly the same as those prac- 
ticed by the United States. We do not need to look very 
far ahead before asking ourselves whether attacks on the 
spiritual independence of the French Republic do not 
constitute a threat against the future of the American 
Republic. The truth is coming to Hght through reflection, 
through observation of the progress achieved by a free 
France in political, intellectual, moral and material ques- 
tions, and finally through the discovery that the slanderous 
charges made against her were grossly exaggerated. I 
lay stress on this point, because it is important to dispose 
of the baseless stories circulated with the object of setting 
American public opinion against efforts to secure freedom 
of thought in France. 

American Women and Secularization in France 

Most American travelers land in Europe with a mental 
attitude that can easily be imagined; they come to rest, 
and to see something new. By this they mean what is 
most unhke the United States, and the ''something new" 
is old Europe. I know more than one fashionable Ameri- 
can woman whose idea of France is made up of the Church 
of the Sacred Heart, the Convent of the Birds and the 
Rue de la Paix. There are quite as many others who 
go to London for the sole purpose of being received 
at Court, and to meet some of the beautiful duchesses, 
marchionesses and countesses who set the styles for many 
of their countrywomen and join with our equally beautiful 
Parisiennes in deploring the contrariness of the age. At 
that painful period when the struggle was at its height, — 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 395 

still more painful to us French than to Americans, — when 
the convents had to be closed, when the monks, white, 
brown and black, had to leave their monasteries, and 
especially when the nuns in their white caps departed, 
signs of sorrow that were natural and worthy of respect 
were given. As for the American women, many of them 
took up arms for the "persecuted rehgion" against the 
government. It was quite conceivable that they should 
do so. In common with many other members of the 
French ParHament, I could have wished that the laws 
we voted, conscientiously believing them to be necessary 
in the interests of France and of civilization, could be put 
into operation without hardship. I suffered a thousand 
times more myself than all the American women who 
blamed us for enforcing the law, as we were bound to do. 
I can understand their sentiment, but if we are to be 
guided by such considerations, where are we to draw the 
line? Are we to let France relapse into the Middle Ages 
so as to make it more picturesque? 

To these now obsolete causes of the unpopularity of 
secular France among a certain section of American society, 
we may add the bad impression created by those of our 
own newspapers that exist for the edification of the same 
society and are the only French newspapers read outside 
France. It seems quite consistent to these journals to 
excite the suspicions of good Frenchmen in France against 
the foreigner and, abroad, to hold France up to contempt 
in foreign eyes. All this is now ancient history, and things 
are standing out in their proper Hght. Americans are 
discovering that they were indignant too soon. They see 
our failings and errors, often through a magnifying glass, 
but they are astounded to observe that, after all, France 
is perfectly quiet, that the churches are celebrating pubhc 
worship as usual, that their bells are rung freely at the 
hours of service, that seminaries are being organized, that 



396 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

priests are appointed without interference, that bishops 
are holding meetings and making triumphal entries into 
their cathedral cities, that there are even pubHc processions 
duly authorized by the municipal councils, that hold up 
the automobiles at the street crossings ! 

Americans can thus see that they have been hoaxed, and 
they will not be taken in a second time. As regards es- 
sential principles, they are on our side and are compelled 
to be there by the mere force of circumstances. There is not 
a single one of them who would put up with any undue 
interference on the part of the Vatican with the work of 
the American government, and they are still more united 
than the French in refusing to admit the possibility, in 
the twentieth century, of an attempt on the part of a re- 
ligion to deny the right of self-government. This will be 
yet another service France has rendered them by one of 
the experiments she carries out at her own cost; but, at 
the same time, they will be enabled to realize that it is 
not for France to found the rehgion of the future. One 
might as well try to build a church on ground cumbered 
with obstacles, fortifications and ruins and already occupied 
by a national church that took root centuries ago and has 
successfully opposed reform — the ''suppressed Reform" 
from which France is suffering, as an EngHsh friend of 
mine used to say. I will go further and say that France's 
business is to supply unity of purpose, inspiration and 
guidance, but not to predominate. She is a connecting 
link, geographically, pohtically and morally. She ought 
not to be a church. She, too, holds her position in the 
world in virtue of services rendered, and she endangers 
that position whenever she attempts to predominate. 

The religion of the future will find its place on the free 
soil of the United States, where its churches, possessing 
neither roots in the past nor ambitious designs for the 
future, are giving up the idea of opposing one another and 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 397 

are already associated in friendly rivalry with philan- 
thropists and an infinite variety of enterprises due to public 
and private benefactors. 

I have already remarked that the development of Social- 
ism in America is hampered by the national activity in 
philanthropic works; and it may find another obstacle 
in joint action of the churches. There is a general com- 
petition in spontaneous undertakings of this kind. Some 
are colossal and some are minute, but ingenuity, money 
and energy are devoted to all of them. I am quite aware 
that the Catholic church in France does not need these 
examples from abroad; the patronages (clubs for youths), 
the free schools {i.e. those not controlled by the 
educational authority), the bowling, athletic, shooting, 
music and travel clubs that are being started even in our 
smallest villages are like a great many offshoots of the 
American churches. But here again we see the difference 
between the two countries. In America, such institutions, 
thanks to their great variety of origin, excite no uneasiness ; 
in France, most of them are Catholic, and are consequently 
opposed to the Republican regime. What makes it worse 
is that as the Republicans are much poorer and admittedly 
much more economical, the great bulk of private charity 
is hostile to the government. Add to this a large part of 
the Press, and American Catholics will perhaps judge us 
more impartially. 

7. Civic and Philanthropic Works 

I would now like to give a sketch of the civic and phil- 
anthropic works that constitute the seed and the fruit of 
American idealism, but they are too numerous. I can 
mention only a few, much regretting that I am compelled 
to omit many that fully deserve our attention. I hope that 
some writer with more time than I have will publish an 



398 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

anthology, or roll of honor, containing a list of these works. 
It is a monument that ought to be erected, not by American 
vanity but by American belief, for the general edification 
and emulation. 



The Presbyterian Church at Seattle 

I will first refer to a religious enterprise that impressed 
me particularly — the First Presbyterian Church at Seattle, 
which I have already mentioned in my chapter on that 
city. I must admit that this church is in an exceptionally 
favorable position. It is very rich, and has a truly mag- 
nificent place of worship. What is more important still, 
its minister and guiding spirit. Rev. A. Matthews, is a man 
of exceptional moral weight and eloquence. In 191 1, it 
had thirteen missions at work in a district which was still, 
to all intents and purposes, virgin soil. Some of them were 
carried on in mere huts, but all took their share in the active 
work of the mother church. The latter is not to be com- 
pared with the many others that are not nearly so well off 
and are only too often afflicted, according to the degree of 
latitude and the prosperity of the state, with ministers 
who are more than half incapable and congregations who are 
not even lukewarm. 

The Seattle Presbyterian Church is a government in 
itself and has its own program. It began by dividing the 
city, where everything is improvised with wonderful speed, 
into 25 districts, each subdivided into quarters, all mapped 
out so as to divide the responsibility properly. In this 
way, nothing escapes the church, and its work is carried 
on all over the city instead of here and there. I may re- 
mark, parenthetically, that the greater share in this model 
organization is, as usual, intrusted to women, who have, 
moreover, well earned their right to a voice in the govern- 
ment of the young state, more than four thousand of the 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 399 

women members of the church being voters. Each of the 
25 districts has its committee, consisting of a president, 
vice president, secretary, treasurer and members, all 
women, whose names are published in the local directories. 
To these we may add occasional librarians and instructors, 
also women. All these committees of men, women, girls and 
young men work quite independently and are represented 
on the general committees, which allot the work according 
to requirements and the resources that each is appointed 
to develop. It is no light task. In addition to pubHc 
worship and religious instruction, and Bible classes carried 
on by voluntary schools and special clubs, there are the 
committees of management, civic works and organizations 
for poor relief and general education. ''I cannot do every- 
thing myself, "says the minister to his flock; "we cannot 
cope with all those who trust in us to help them, and 
you must give me all the support you can, — physical, 
mental, moral, financial, social and domestic, religious and 
spiritual." With more or less assistance — for his is ob- 
viously the mind that inspires all the others — he has con- 
stituted his departments of church work as follows : One 
committee attends to the proper organizing of national 
celebrations, another to the newspapers and a third to 
church decorations. A committee of married women 
carries out the delicate duty of assisting and advising young 
women who are in want. There is a general music com- 
mittee that looks after the choirs and organ, engages sing- 
ers, gets up oratorios, cantatas and recitals from time to 
time, runs the Sunday concerts and sees that the programs 
are suitable. There is also a special music committee that 
holds a brilliant concert every Thursday evening. Some- 
times a charge is made for seats, so as to raise a little money. 
Another committee looks after Sunday school music. One 
committee superintends the work of all the others and se- 
lects new members. Another examines the accounts, and 



400 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

another is responsible for the collections and checking the 
amounts received. Thanks to the first-named vigilant 
general staff, the church, well managed internally, rich, 
largely attended and respected, is able to exercise outward 
influence through other committees whose names suffi- 
ciently indicate their duties. There is a literature com- 
mittee, to select suitable reading for the members ; another 
for helping the Japanese, who are very numerous at Seattle ; 
another for orphans; another for kindergartens; another 
for prisons and prisoners, including those just discharged, 
who have to be provided with work ; another to distribute 
rehef and find out those who need it ; another for fraternity ; 
another for introducing new members; another for tem- 
perance ; another for the sailors on board the ships in the 
harbor; another for the hospitals; another committee 
with a special endowment for work among seamen ; an- 
other to look after the sick and send them doctors, nurses, 
medicines and dehcacies; a helping-hand committee to 
give moral support to weak characters ; another to keep 
the hotels in touch with the church ; another for the rest 
of the churches ; a gymnastic committee for men and boys ; 
a physical culture committee for women ; a commitee to 
look after children on Sundays while their parents are 
attending service; an art and literature committee; a 
recreation committee, for playgrounds and excursions; a 
committee for the stores, and more especially for the lum- 
bermen, who, in so immense a country, are very lonely ; 
a friendship committee to restore harmony in the workshop, 
household and city ; a committee for domestic science ; a 
committee for sewing schools ; another to look after chil- 
dren whose parents are obliged to go out to work during the 
day ; a committee to investigate the various pubHc, semi- 
pubKc, philanthropic or benevolent societies that need 
support and money ; an anti- tuberculosis committee ; and 
a health culture committee. There are many more, but 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 4OI 

I have mentioned enough to show how the Americans or- 
ganize their church works — by dint of order, method and 
division of labor, but also by intelligent and devoted man- 
agement. 

Pastor Matthews 

''Devoted" is too feeble a word to meet the case; 
we should rather say the high-minded enthusiasm or 
sacred fire that takes hold of a man or woman and kindles 
the same fire in others. Money, talents, health, physical 
and moral energy, natural gifts, ceaseless activity, sacrifice 
of himself and his family — all these things does Minister 
Matthews use for his purpose with a lavish hand, just as 
stokers, when American competition was in its infancy, 
were so determined to ''get there first" at any cost that 
they threw anything that would burn into the furnace. 
When I spoke beside this extraordinary man, whom I have 
never seen since, I felt myself reduced to a sort of fuel, and 
I burned with all my heart in front of the audience, which 
was burning too. While he was introducing me to his 
flock and giving a brief and simple explanation of the pur- 
pose of my journey, I watched him, and saw his whole life 
outlined in his speech and gestures. He was still young, 
but consumed by his own burning zeal, and his long, thin 
frame was httle more than a thread. His organ-toned 
voice, however, was left, and so were his eyes — deep-set 
and fascinating, full of cheerful confidence and contempt 
for obstacles. Though he did not suspect it, they answered 
for the success of not merely his own work but the future of 
a country in which such works are legion. 

Andrew Carnegie 

Such works are to be found in every department of life. 
I have already mentioned what Andrew Carnegie has done 
for peace, and have pointed out that the mere giving of 

2D 



402 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

money is only an accessory of the effort to make the under- 
taking produce really useful results and extend its influence 
far and wide through every avenue of thought and into 
every country. 

Would that I had time to say something about the fine 
Scottish estate he bought at Dunfermline, his native place, 
and made into a royal park, set aside for future genera- 
tions ! It is more than a park, and should rather be de- 
scribed as a paradise. Andrew Carnegie, however, does not 
stand unrivaled. There are a great many men in the 
United States who vie with one another in devoting the 
best of themselves to the work of peace. Among them are 
university presidents, heads of important banks, magazines 
and newspapers (notably Mr. Melville Stone, the head of 
the largest telegraphic news agency in the world, the Asso- 
ciated Press), business men and manufacturers. 

Edwin Ginn 

My dear friend, Edwin Ginn, the well-known Boston 
publisher, devoted the closing years of his life to assist- 
ing those willing workers who are worn out by the 
struggle against indifference and prejudice. He, too, has 
given millions to found the Peace School conducted by 
his worthy fellow worker, Edwin Mead. He used to live 
for this work as much as for his own children. He con- 
sidered it as one of them, and he had his reward. His 
offices were in themselves a source of satisfaction to their 
founder. All who worked with him were more or less like 
partners on confidential terms with him. It was a pleasure 
to mix with his typewriters and bookkeepers. The general 
feeling was one of cheerfulness and confidence. This in- 
fluential business establishment had the serene atmosphere 
of a chapel.^ 

1 Now that Edwin Ginn has passed away, I am sure that nothing is 
changed in the atmosphere of his office. He is still there ; his mind, his in- 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 403 

I have already remarked that in this country of strenu- 
ous life, gentleness and humanity constantly crop up like 
a flower unexpectedly discovered on the wayside ; but I 
have not yet said that while this flower brings joy to its 
cultivators, it also brings wealth and progress to the people 
who profit by it ; for it is to be noted that those cities in 
which idealism flourishes are the most prosperous. Boston 
is a striking instance. Nowhere in the United States have 
Americans higher and more generous ideals or a more in- 
tellectual and spiritual life. But nevertheless Boston's 
material prosperity is advancing steadily. In addition to 
the growing importance of its university and its port, it 
has become a first-class agricultural center. Its ideahsts 
all raise and sell apples and various other fruits, breed live 
stock and produce any quantity of butter, cream and pre- 
serves. Boston is one of the largest fruit markets in the 
world — a new center for vegetable food. Our French 
railroad companies are advising our farmers to copy the 
regular and methodical system that has enabled American 
and Canadian exporters to sell $10,000,000 worth of 
apples, in London for instance, in 1907. This is only a 
beginning, and in the meantime France, which supplied all 
the New World with Normandy apple trees, and whose 
fruit ought to fetch the highest prices with proper organiza- 
tion, sold only about $108,000 worth. This shows how 
idealism, scrupulous attention in every detail and apparent 
disinterestedness can bring about economic victories. The 
secret is not hard to guess. Americans are always learning. 
They take the trouble to start in and learn, quite simply 
as I have said, the best way to gather apples ; after which 
they take care to grade the fruit properly. They select 
only the best for sale, wrap each one separately in tissue 
paper and then pack and forward them, so that the buyer 

spiration have remained amongst his collaborators. They still continue 
to work with him ; his spirit will act after him like a living force. 



404 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

knows what he is getting, even before he opens the case. 
He relies on the seller's conscientiousness, and trusts him. 
*'The French farmer still has to be educated on this point," 
writes our Orleans Railway Co., whereas at Boston this 
education is finished. I mention this detail to show that 
idealism and practical business sense go hand in hand in 
the New World, and that moral improvement multiplies 
material progress a hundredfold, instead of being a loss of 
time, as some believe it to be. 

Scientific Management 

Manufactures are quite as prosperous throughout this 
part of New England, thanks to the operation of those 
liberal principles best adapted to the interests both of 
employers and employed. There is a regular school for 
teaching the scientific management of factories ; that is to 
say, how to obtain not only the best results from workmen, 
but the greatest amount of satisfaction. This is yet an- 
other department in which business men have taken the 
public interest to heart and combined their experience and 
their money so as to leave their country an inheritance of 
prosperity. I trust that I shall not be taken to mean more 
than I say, for I do not propose to fall into the mistake of 
praising whatever I see abroad and undervaluing France ; 
but the more I admire my own country, the more exasper- 
ated I am to see that it is losing ground through its own fault. 
I am quite aware that the United States have no monopoly 
of benevolent enterprises. Praiseworthy efforts have been 
made and great results attained by French manufacturers. 
Without counting what has been done by men still living, 
Paris is covered with institutions bearing such respected 
names as Cochin, Lariboisiere, Boucicault, etc., but these 
undertakings might be more numerous ; they are the rule 
in the United States. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 405 

American Museums 

It is a matter of self-reproach with me to have left out 
American museums. I could say a great deal on this sub- 
ject, but it would be like trying to describe a world. As 
a sample, we may take the New York Metropohtan Museum, 
which is constantly being enlarged but is always too small, 
and into which flows a stream of donations, amounting on 
the average to a thousand every month. It receives, not 
merely donations, but advice and constant service freely 
given, so that it shall not be an accumulation of collec- 
tions, like the Louvre, but a lesson in beauty, art and taste 
by which the people can profit. It is perhaps already too 
late to say that French art is faced by a great danger. 
Official lack of backbone is lowering our taste — a fact 
which we are beginning to reahze. The Americans have 
taken the cream of our masterpieces and are finding inspira- 
tion in them, and we had better not reckon too much on 
their buying our second-rate productions. It will be with 
art as with manufactures. Americans began by buying our 
motors regardless of cost. They now make standardized 
cars in vast quantities and flood Europe with them. 

High as is the art standard of the museums, it is small 
in comparison with their immense educational value. 
The result is that they are visited by thousands of people 
every day and, unHke what occurs elsewhere, the majority 
of these visitors consists, not of foreigners, but of Americans. 
Most of the museums were due to the generosity of private 
individuals, and they are so organized that a museum of 
decorative art, for instance, raises the general level, because 
it shows some visitors their true vocation and creates a 
demand in others for something better than that to which 
they have hitherto been accustomed. These museums are 
founded and managed so as to instruct the people and the 
country and not to serve as storehouses for pictures. 



4o6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

A Model Farm 

It is the same with the model farms, orchards and chicken 
farms, where I have seen one man attend to 20,000 chickens 
in incubators. There is general competition to see who can 
most simplify and improve agricultural methods, not only 
for personal profit or amusement but for the general good. 
There is one man, Mr. Seth Low, formerly president of 
Columbia University, mayor of New York and member of 
the Hague Conference, who was afterwards invested with a 
sort of moral function in which he excels, as arbitrator in con- 
flicts between capital and labor. It seemed to me that he was 
entitled to take a rest ; but a man of action never rests, and 
still less in the United States than elsewhere. I went to 
see him at his country house. I found him with his wife 
— they form one of the model couples I have described — 
running a model farm. Great Brook Farm. I have seen 
considerable progress accompHshed every year by the 
French people and the government itself in my country. 
I have also seen remarkable developments in England and 
in other European countries, and I thought the United 
States could hardly beat us in this matter, except perhaps 
as regards the size of their undertakings, but I was mis- 
taken. Brook Farm proved to be another instance of 
scrupulous care, method and search after perfection in 
every detail. My visit to the dairy at evening feeding 
time was very instructive. As on our best farms, little 
cars on rails brought the impatient cows their supply of 
sweet- smelling fodder. Then came a second course, con- 
sisting of some kind of cake mixed with handfuls of salt. 
Two youths fed a herd of about forty cows in a quarter of 
an hour. Diagrams hung up in the cow houses showed at 
a glance how much milk each animal produced per day. 
There were appliances for manipulating the cream and also, 
if I am not mistaken, machines for making ice to keep the 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 407 

cream fresh. There were also pigsties, ingeniously con- 
trived so that each family could wallow or trot about in the 
enjoyment of plenty of light, air and freedom. Everything 
else was on similar lines. The farm hands were all smart- 
looking fellows. One of them was a student in an agricul- 
tural college, and was reading up for his examinations. 
They all lived in a club on the farm — a very clean Httle 
two-story house with a bedroom for each man, a bathroom 
and a very pretty dining-room, where there was a white 
cloth on the table. 

I am quite aware that Brook Farm is a very costly ex- 
periment and an exceptional case ; but it is a sample of 
the prevailing spirit of healthy American emulation which 
I have encountered everywhere. I must, however, finish 
with these instances of pubhc and private initiative by 
mentioning the one that strikes me as the finest, the most 
general and the most national — assistance for children. 

8. Children 

Here again there is no misconception, no charity, no 
almsgiving and no sentiment. It is the general interest 
pointing out the duty of every individual. Froebel's fine 
saying is an article of faith with the kindergarten associa- 
tion : ''The destiny of nations is in the hands of women 
and mothers rather than in those of rulers." Children are 
national capital whose value is generally recognized, and 
it is well undertsood that this capital cannot become pro- 
ductive unless it makes a good beginning. 

It is, therefore, through a sense of civic duty and patriot- 
ism, and with the purpose of giving their country order and 
good health, that American men and women take an interest 
in child-rescue work. They hold exhibitions, so as to propa- 
gate ideas that may tend to the welfare of children, in New 
York, Kansas City and Chicago, with profusely distributed 



4o8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

illustrated catalogues and magazines. They know quite 
well that, without proper care and shelter, the most promis- 
ing children are those in the greatest danger and may de- 
velop into criminals. Society makes enemies of them 
through not knowing how to keep them on its own side. 
Instead of utilizing them as a force, society lets them be- 
come a source of weakness, in the shape of vagabonds, hooli- 
gans and outcasts, because it began by making them poor 
and miserable. It knows very well that the condition of 
children cannot be improved by sermons, and still less by 
punishment. Its chief object is to give them the amount of 
space and freedom, both materially and morally, that are 
necessities of life for all of us. 

As regards the moral side, Americans have not forgotten 
their own varied origin, and they know how much they 
owe to the complete freedom of action enjoyed by their 
ancestors. Their independence and their country itself 
were born of this freedom ; but now that the New World is 
populated and more or less Europeanized, such independ- 
ent action is limited and cramped. What will it become ? 
It will ferment and do as much harm as it formerly did good. 
''It is a sad fact," say the Americans, ''that the quahties 
that led to the growth of our race and enabled it to reach 
its present position are precisely those that are most fatal 
to children. We must therefore open a credit account for 
them, and let them have scope to expand and spontaneously 
utiHze their energy for the general good. To this end, let us 
learn the art of governing children — governing but not 
spoihng them." 

Teach them to Play 

" We must, of course, love them, but our first duty is to 
prepare them for their part in life and teach them not only 
the value of labor but that of leisure, and show them how 
to play. This is a new sort of education, we may be told. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 



409 



that will come of itself. Not at all ; it calls for a great 
deal of care in the gradual substitution of discipHne and 
social contentment for the worst impulses." 

Their Need for Life, Space, Nature, Quiet 

From the material point of view, the child needs a great 
deal of space, air, hght, Nature, trees, grass, flowers, birds 
and in fact everything that has Hfe. He has an especial 
need of quiet, so that he may expand instead of becoming 
timid. He must be removed from the agitation of modern 
life. These needs have become an obsession even with 
those families who insist on their children sleeping with 
open windows (giving on to a garden whenever possible) 
and whose members all accustom themselves to sleeping in 
tents in the mountains and seeking the soHtude of Nature. 
I came to realize this at Syracuse, on discovering a baby only 
only a few months old (belonging to a friend of ours) left to 
itself hke Moses in a cradle. It was quite alone in its little 
carriage at the further end of the park. When I expressed 
my astonishment, I was told : ''It is by the doctor's order. 
Quiet does the baby a great deal of good ; his mother excites 
him." This is Nature reasserting itself, and here we see 
the influence of Rousseau. But how are we to give fresh 
air and quiet to the wretched creatures that are born, so to 
speak, in the street, live in it, and sleep in it? And what a 
street ! One of the most discouraging problems of civiHza- 
tion Hes in the great contrast between the extreme pros- 
perity of the moneyed classes and the extreme wretchedness 
and degradation of the poor. It was to bring these two 
extremes nearer that those excellent institutions known as 
the Playground Associations came into being. They have 
already produced infinitely happy results, and promise 
still more for the future. Their founders were perfectly 
right. They are working for the generations to come, and 



4IO AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

they justly maintain that the future of civilization is bound 
up with the success of their gigantic enterprise. It certainly 
is gigantic. 

Playground Associations 

The Playground Association has branches in every city 
that respects itself. They all depend on private sub- 
scriptions and are managed exclusively by voluntary 
helpers. The association has its own organ, a very interest- 
ing monthly magazine, The Playground. The head office 
is in New York, at i Madison Avenue, but I saw the enter- 
prise at work chiefly in the interior of the country, where it 
is supported, with a zeal that is nothing short of passionate, 
by private individuals, municipalities and the nation in 
general. It puts the question bluntly and forcibly : Rec- 
reation is as necessary as work ; where can the child play ? 
The reply is : Not even in the street. It is a prison that 
stops his growth and surrounds him with dangers. You 
must find him the space he needs. 

Tadpoles 

The old story of tadpoles — which I have not verified 
but simply relate — is appropriate here. You take several 
tadpoles of the same age and size, and put them in glass 
bottles of different sizes. Those in the largest bottle 
become the biggest and strongest, and those in the smallest 
bottle become the smallest and weakest frogs. 

It is the same with children. If they are weak and sickly, 
they will eventually fill the hospitals and prisons, and 
prove very expensive to you, instead of bringing you in a 
return for what you have spent on them. In vain you 
provide them with children's courts, conseils de tutelle, 
etc., all very well in their way but insufficient. You are 
trying to make up for what you ought to have prevented. 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 411 

The result of this movement is that in every city the 
association has laid out or set aside gardens, unoccupied 
lots, sand heaps, ponds in which children disport them- 
selves in summer, gymnasiums, baths (in which boys and 
girls swim alternately, under the eye of the swimming in- 
structor), kitchen-gardens, where they try their hands at 
raising vegetables and flowers, tents in which they take ref- 
uge when the weather is bad, workshops where the boys 
learn carpentering, for instance, and the girls are taught 
to make artificial flowers, and where they even play 
parlor games and bilHards. They have also large halls, 
where they learn to dance or wrestle, or Hsten to music, 
and concerts are organized for them. Before they reach 
the concert period, they are read to, but what they get 
is an improvement on mere reading, which is apt to be 
tiresome. A lively girl — cheerfulness, encouragement 
and confidence are always made the dominant notes in 
education — stands in front of all the Httle folks, the girls 
sitting on one side and the boys on the other, and tells 
them stories. Such delightful stories ! How eagerly the 
children listen, and how they love to escape from themselves 
into the realms of imagination ! They are also provided 
with reading matter — books and newspapers that will not 
soil their minds too soon. They are also taught to sew. 

Excursions. Bonfires. 

The happiest time is when they are turned out into a field 
to play at Indians and light fires. Americans, who have 
burned many a forest, are shamed to see punishment in- 
flicted for this instinct, bequeathed as it is to their children, 
and they vaccinate them against it by letting them light 
camp fires. In the same way, footbaU, and especially 
throwing balls, turns the combative instinct into the channels 
of sport. 



412 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Excursions and holiday schools are also provided for 
children, and every effort is made to exercise their activity 
and give it the largest possible amount of nourishment 
instead of cramping it. Their natural curiosity is antici- 
pated. 

John Brashear 

One of those Americans whom I can never forget is the 
venerable Dr. John A. Brashear, the descendant of a French 
family (Brazier) . He is head of the Pittsburgh Observatory, 
and he it was who wrote this fine and spiritual epitaph to be 
carved on the tomb to which his wife had preceded him : 
''We have so often looked at the stars together that we 
are not afraid of the night." He is old in years but as 
active and lively as a young man. He is devoted to 
children. Every week he throws open his observatory to 
them, and, with the cordiality and simplicity of the true 
savant, does the honors of the sky for them. 

John Bigelow 

Another grand old American, whose kindness was precious 
to me, John Bigelow, a thick-and-thin free trader, formerly 
United States minister in Paris, died a nonagenarian. I 
saw him again in New York not long before his death. He 
had some reporters with him, and was dictating strong and 
eloquent pleas for the protection of women and children, 
on the occasion of the opening of the fine New York City 
library, where there are special reading rooms for children 
only. 

The Pageant 

At Pittsburgh, guided by a mother who was my good 
genius, I saw something that moved me more than I can 
describe. It was the pageant given to the children by the 
Playground Association in the month of May. All the 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 413 

school children in the city, both boys and girls, were con- 
veyed, by railroad, street car, omnibus, motor car, carts, 
bicycles, and in fact every conceivable means, to the 
immense open-air arena where on ordinary occasions there 
is a baseball crowd of 40,000 people. This time the specta- 
tors were children, all in their appointed places, thanks 
to marvelous organization. I shuddered to think of the 
responsibility of their teachers, but nothing happened. 
One precaution, which looked rather like a threat, was 
taken — it was announced on placards that the police 
would take charge of any child that strayed from the 
others when going home ; and I did not see a single accident. 
The lame and maimed, some with wooden legs and others 
with crutches, were in front, on the benches or in their 
invalid chairs. 

What sort of entertainment could these thousands of 
children have come to see ? A play — a gigantic one 
and the actors were children like themselves. The play 
was a pretty story. It had a moral, not for them, but for 
their parents, because, in the United States, the failings of 
the child are the fault of the parents. The play is be- 
ginning, and there is dead silence. All the little ones are 
looking eagerly at the far-off entrance to the stadium, 
where we soon see a handsome shepherd come in, playing 
his rustic pipe, with an accompaniment by the orchestra. 
This shepherd (no other than one of the Pittsburgh young 
women school-teachers) is at once seen to be the hero of the 
play. The city represented by the scene is swarming with 
rats, and there is no way of getting rid of them. In vain the 
councilors deliberate ; they are utterly at a loss, and their 
helplessness is amusingly accentuated by the rats, which 
froHc about in all directions and brave them with impunity. 
The rats, of course, are played by small boys, each simply 
but effectively costumed in a close-fitting suit of gray 
ending with a tail and provided with two sharp-pointed 



414 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

ears, below which the boy's delighted face is visible. 
How they frolicked on all fours, ran after one another 
and knocked one another over ! There were more of them 
than I could count, and with every jump they gave, the 
great galleries seemed to jump too, the whole crowd of 
children shouting, gesticulating and cheering. There never 
was such fun ! 

The town councilors, however, finally make up their 
minds to do something. They send for the piper, who 
knows how to charm the rats, and strike a bargain with him 
to attract the vermin to the river, where they will all be 
drowned. The piper plays his most fascinating tune and 
all the rats follow him. Every one knows the old legend 
that was the subject of Browning's poem, and how ungrate- 
ful the councilors were. Having got rid of the rats, 
they fail to keep their promise, refuse to pay the price 
agreed upon and begin to haggle. Whereupon, to punish 
them, the piper goes off playing again, and this time all 
the children in the wicked town follow him. Here begins 
the American moral, the second part of the pageant. 

The migrant children are far from complaining. They 
are quite happy, in fact much happier than they were at 
home, because they have found a playground. We see 
them running about, dancing, and singing in company with 
flowers, butterflies, frogs, birds and other creatures, repre- 
sented by other children in costume. Then the piper con- 
fines his revenge to summoning the parents to see how 
their children are enjoying themselves. The climax comes 
with the arrival of the parents, and their discovery of the 
pure joys of Nature, of which they were ignorant ; and a new 
life begins for children, parents and the whole country. 
They all go back to the city together with the piper, singing 
''Liberty, peace and purity," in chorus. 

The galleries then empty to the strains of the " Playground 
March," and the contents of the whole reservoir of youth 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 415 

stream out of the numerous wide portals towards the 
place where the vehicles are waiting to take every one 
home. 

I congratulated and thanked those who organized this chil- 
dren's meeting. He would be very blind who could fail to see 
the greatness of the service they render and the incalculable 
effect of these new works, which have extended so rapidly 
all over the United States, where they are regenerating the 
children, and, through them, the parents. The good they 
do is not limited to a single country. It is contagious, and 
goes far afield. This contagion is general in England and 
particularly in Germany and Scandinavia. In France, it is 
already noticeable. It coincided with the progress of 
liberty and peace, with legislation for the protection of 
labor, with the triumph of our roads and the revival of 
athletic sports, cycling, motoring and aviation. It is 
an unsuspected revolution which will react upon people's 
minds, bodies and habits. It will discipHne us and supply 
us with the public spirit now lacking. Playground asso- 
ciations are already trying to begin operations and make 
their voices heard in Paris, where the fortifications are to 
be done away with and replaced by a ring of public parks. 
Football has become acclimatized wonderfully quickly, 
and baseball will soon follow. It is less easy to found 
city-garden associations and those whose objects are 
children's gardens, eugenics, open spaces, sanitation and 
the transformation of cities ; but though progress is slow, 
it undoubtedly exists. New questions are arising every day 
and forcing themselves on the attention of the public author- 
ities and parliament. The struggle for improving the status 
of women and children and supporting those who need pro- 
tection has ceased to be mere talk. The movements against 
tuberculosis, drink, immorality and the white slave traffic 
were for a long time merely platonic, but are now popular 
and will soon be national, just as mutual aid associations, 



41 6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

old-age pensions and assistance and preventive hygiene, in 
preference to the old-fashioned charitable remedies, are 
flourishing. Cheap transport for workmen between cities 
and suburbs, the elimination of unsanitary houses, the 
building of workmen's dwellings, the constitution of family 
trusts, and many similar ideas are taking root. 

The Light of Truth 

These signs of progress cannot be confined to one country. 
They will expand, like light and truth, far beyond frontiers. 
They will soon spread out and tend to settle down in the 
most civilized countries, whose example the others will 
follow. The mere force of circumstances will impel all 
these national associations to exchange ideas. They will 
need one another, and will combine, just as the Olympic 
committees, for instance, have done. This does not yet 
constitute unity and fraternity, but it is at any rate emula- 
tion, and often it amounts to comradeship and friendship. 
Each of these associations has its country, but they all 
have the same ideal. Beginning by bringing the young 
together, they will have men of full age on their side as time 
goes on, and finally the old. Unintentionally, perhaps, but 
with an efhcacy which will be all the more irresistible, 
they will pave the way for a new era in international rela- 
tions. They will not allow governments to declare war 
lightly. 

The Christian Command 

These are great changes that foreshadow others, still 
greater. A religion is coming into the world. It is growing 
up with childhood and through childhood, respecting every 
human being's rights and working for those least able to 
help themselves. It is for liberty, justice and duty. This 
religion will let some of the others live and some die. It 



THE IDEALISTIC MOVEMENT 417 

will be SO profoundly human that it will not even need a 
name. It will imply a common faith in what is good. It 
will be the rehgion that will separate us less than any other, 
and also the one that will most faithfully apply the truly 
Christ-like saying: '^ Suffer little children to come unto 
me. 



2E 



CHAPTER XV 



COMPETITION 



I . Pittsburgh : Production . The circulation of things, men and ideas . 
Fort Duquesne. Fort Pitt. Pittsburgh. Gas, coal and wheat one 
above the other. Blast furnaces. The apotheosis of initiative. 
Conveyance by land and water. — 2. Americans against Ameri- 
cans : Pittsburgh's competitors. Chicago. Railroads and canals. 
The Erie Canal. Duluth. Roads. La Salle Creek. Disciplining 
Niagara. Education by gentleness. Collective labor. Another 
moving house. Unloading ore automatically at Buffalo. ^—3. Com- 
petition PROM Canada : The two banks of the Niagara. Revenge 
after prolonged disdain. A clear field. Four months of hot 
weather. The population of Canada. Agriculture. Motoculture. 
Pere Monnier. Three transcontinental railroads. Navigation on 
rivers, canals and lakes. Hudson Bay. Our slowness. The 
port of Brest. The armed peace system. A century of peace be- 
tween England and America. Contagious dreadnought fever. — 
4. Universal competition: The West Indies. South America. 
The African continent. From the Nile to the Zambesi. From 
Morocco to the Cape. Asia. Turkey. American ignorance of 
Russia. A Canada in Europe and Asia. Competition from old 
countries. Great and small powers. Scandinavia. Americans 
between two fires. 

I. Production 

The general idealistic movement, indications of which I 
found wherever I went, and the philanthropic competition 
in which universities, churches, states, cities, individuals 
and public and private associations are engaged, involve 
not only a great deal of enthusiasm but the expenditure 
of a great deal of money. Idealism is like an investment 
that swallows up a large amount of capital without any pros- 

418 



COMPETITION 419 

pect of immediate results. It pays, and pays splendidly, 
but only in proportion to the outlay of capital and effort, 
and these the Americans supply with a lavish hand. They 
realize that a new country is like a child from whom nothing 
can be reasonably expected unless he has been nourished, 
strengthened and taught; the more you spend on him, 
the more he will be able to do in the future, but in the future 
only. The Americans are trying to make this future as 
little distant as possible. They began in a state of feverish 
impatience. They have now reached the stage in which 
they are profiting by their experience and making methodi- 
cal arrangements to meet their needs. They are already 
living on a large scale and are preparing to make it even 
larger. The main point is to increase their productive 
capacity, because the consumer's demands are steadily 
increasing, and while the output is growing at the rate of 
40 per cent, the consumption has risen 60 per cent. As we 
have seen, every one is engaged more or less successfully in 
getting everything possible out of the earth, and under it, 
without exhausting its resources. Produce varies according 
to latitude, but is abundant everywhere. In one region 
there are corn, wheat, barley and potatoes; in another, 
cotton, rice, sugar and tobacco; in another, northern 
varieties of fruit, farm and dairy produce, animal food in 
all sorts of forms, canned meat, leather, hides, etc. ; in 
another, ores— iron, copper, lead, coal, petroleum and 
precious metals ; in another, cotton goods and the products 
of a young and growing industry keenly on the lookout for 
novelties — from cars, locomotives, motors and pianos 
to agricultural machinery, typewriters, calculating ma- 
chines and the implement with which no other can compare 
for varied utility — the machine tool, which reduces the 
work of years to hours and takes the place of thousands 
of horses, millions of arms and hands and delicate fingers, as 
well as of workers of both sexes in the factories and fields. 



420 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Finally I must mention steel rails, already forming an im- 
mense network larger than the whole extent of railroads in 
Europe. Production, in fact, is only the first step. The 
produce has to be sold, put into circulation and brought 
to market. This is the great secondary effort that must 
be made. A good circulation of things, human beings and 
ideas — the three are inseparable — is to a country what 
the circulation of the blood is to the body. I believe Ameri- 
cans understand this better than we French do. The 
social, intellectual and economic life of the United States 
is made up of unlimited fresh air. 

The Circulation of Things, Men and Ideas 

It was at Pittsburgh that I best understood this double 
need of production and circulation, although it is perhaps 
less urgent here than in some of the other new cities I 
have described. The reason is that it has existed long 
enough at Pittsburgh to have raised all the questions in- 
separable from the development of a great industrial city. 
It was at Pittsburgh, as every one knows, that one of the 
most serious and sanguinary strikes in the United States 
occurred. It is there that the disputes between employers and 
workmen are perhaps the hardest to settle, though they can 
no longer be called the most acute ; it is there that the an- 
tagonism between white and black labor seemed to me to be 
the strongest ; it is there that Socialism takes advantage 
of the spread of instruction to carry on active propaganda, 
and it is also there that philanthropy and public spirit 
put forth their greatest efforts. 

Fort Duquesne. Fort Pitt. Pittsburgh 

During my tour in 1907, I stayed longer at Pittsburgh 
than anywhere. I again spent some time there in 191 1, 



COMPETITION 421 

at the end of my long journey, being detained by the charms 
of family hospitality and by the necessity of putting my 
notes and observations into order. And then Pittsburgh 
is such a fine city ! Though its history goes back a century 
and a half, this great city is only at the beginning of its 
development. We can see this by the way in which its 
new houses are spreading over the hills towards the great 
open spaces of Shenley Park ; by its immense educational 
establishments, erected by a generous municipahty on sites 
not yet invaded by the home-builder ; by its numerous and 
imposing public institutions of a kind usually found only 
in cities with centuries of maturity ; by its great business 
activity and its citizens' manner of life ; by the number of 
young men and girls who attend its magnificent institute 
and technical schools ; and by the plenitude of its offspring, 
as shown by its universities, schools and playground. It 
is all ferment, fire and fumes; it is the vanguard of the 
vanguard. Was it not intended by its origin and its geo- 
graphical position to play this important part? Its loca- 
tion, like that of St. Louis and many other cities, was 
selected by our pioneers, and, of course, as usual, other 
nations reaped the harvest. The first settlement on this 
site was Fort Duquesne, whose name was changed by the 
English and became Fort Pitt, whence came the present 
name, Pittsburgh. There could not be a better place 
than such a steep promontory — a spur of rock and iron, 
a bowl fashioned by two rivers that combine to form the 
great highways of the Ohio. Between these three rivers, 
on whose bosom it seems to sail, Pittsburgh lifts its head 
proudly and follows the great stream that leads from the 
Atlantic and the Allegheny Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico 
and the Isthmus of Panama. 

Watercourses, however, are not enough for Pittsburgh. 
It needs a newer kind of river — steel rivers, faster and 
more numerous than those provided by Nature ; and these 



422 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

new rivers spring from its own entrails. The subsoil of 
Pennsylvania is full of riches, especially coal, oil and 
natural gas. Below the wheat fields are coal fields, and 
still further down are the petroleum reservoirs. Coal crops 
out almost under one's feet. It is found when new streets 
are being laid out or when the foundations of houses are 
being excavated. 

It was thus that Pittsburgh became a great manufacturing 
center, with ironworks producing vast quantities of pig 
iron to be afterwards transformed into steel of every con- 
ceivable kind. Thousands of miles of long rails issue 
from the rolling mills and extend, like great arms stretched 
parallel, all over the continent, pick up the ore for 
the ever hungry mills and bring it to Pittsburgh. The 
ore is found principally to the northwest, at the end of 
Lake Superior — "Fond du Lac" — around Duluth (Du- 
Lude), another privileged center, where iron ore is so pro- 
digiously abundant that it can be taken up by machinery 
almost on the surface of the ground. The machine has a 
long arm, which can be moved in any direction by one 
man ; and at the end of the arm there is a strange kind of 
gigantic hand that combines the uses of pick, shovel and 
spoon in one, that digs into the ore, seizes it, carries it off 
and piles it up in the basin-shaped cars of an immense train 
to which fresh cars are constantly added. When the train 
can hold no more, it goes and empties itself automatically 
from the top of the wharf into the holds of the boats plying 
on the Great Lakes. I do not suppose that the combined 
use of trains and boats has ever been better understood than 
at Duluth, where each loads the other. There are many 
photographs I would like to publish in support of my 
impressions, but not one would be more striking than that 
of these immense ore docks, showing the boats moored 
alongside of a great timber framework three stories high. 
On top of this structure is a long gallery over which the 



COMPETITION 423 

trains run, pouring a constant stream of ore into the boats, 
like water from a tank. These boats make their way 
through Lake Huron to Lake Erie and discharge their con- 
tents into other trains at Cleveland, whence the ore is taken 
to Pittsburgh. Here again we find a combination of river 
and railroad transit; for Pittsburgh is a great riverside 
port — too often flooded, like most of the towns in the 
Mississippi valley. 

Blast Furnaces 

At Pittsburgh there is a great emptying of trains and 
boats full of ore, coal, limestone and everything else 
required by the ironworks, which divide them up, turn 
on the flames of natural gas, put the metal through blast 
furnaces, cast, hammer and forge it, lighting up the mid- 
night sky with a lurid glow as different as possible from the 
starry, unsullied heavens that shone over Fort Duquesne. 
Our pioneers' dreams have literally ended in smoke ; but, 
beyond the dreams and behind the smoke, realities are 
coming into being. And they are realities indeed : an 
outrush of burning energy, a burst of tremendous vitality 
from the ground fertilized by the genius of mankind, a 
constant movement in all directions, north and south, 
east and west, power and speed in every form — the 
apotheosis, in fact, of the river. The smoke, lit up by the 
glare from the furnaces, is, as it were, the river's breath, 
rising like incense to the sky. It is the apotheosis of 
initiative. 

The Apotheosis of Initiative 

An exclamation of admiration for what man has accom- 
plished rises to the lips of the traveler who views this 
spectacle — a cry of admiration, mingled with confidence 
in the future of a nation which, although so young, has 
already contrived to carry its organization to such a point. 



424 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Pittsburgh has built furnaces and grappled with problems, 
and both the one and the other help to accentuate the 
extreme need for education and for organization — social, 
municipal, collective or private — without which all these 
forces would produce nothing but disorder and anarchy. 
*' We have utilized earth, air, water and fire, but now comes 
the essential point : utilizing men and children." This is 
the duty of to-morrow. One of my fellow members of 
the French parliament, who was present, like myself, in 
1907, at this display of Pittsburgh's active spirit of emula- 
tion, exclaimed: ''I should not be sorry for our sons if 
they had to live here." Thousands of others in the United 
States have echoed this sentiment, which conveys a great 
deal. 

But it is time to return to the main question. It is dif- 
ficult to decide which of these great streams of water, coal, 
iron or steel should be selected for examination, but I must 
try to profit by the great object lesson I have before my 
eyes, and make my country profit by it too. 

Transport by Land and Water 

We have seen that the processes of thought, action, work 
and production are only a beginning — the mere preparation 
of the undertaking. What is wanted now is to bring about 
exchanges, put produce in circulation, obtain customers and 
estabUsh business relations. We have a superabundance 
of natural resources, and what we need is, emphatically, 
means of transport. The greatest effort of our time is in 
this direction. Every country feels the need of a moral, 
intellectual and economic tie, and there is a corresponding 
need for another and material link in the shape of new 
forms of transport. Man is no longer willing to admit that 
there shall be any unknown territories that cannot be 
crossed, or seas that cannot be sailed. He cuts through 



COMPETITION 



425 



mountains and isthmuses, and girdles continents and oceans 
with innumerable trains and steamers. Owing to the 
miracles of science and the progress of education, the de- 
velopment of every country and its political, administrative 
and commercial organization has become a question of 
transports. The Eastern question would have been settled 
long ago, at very little expense and to the great advantage 
of all concerned, had the European powers, instead of 
being divided against themselves, agreed to estabHsh means 
of communication all over European Turkey. They would 
have given Hfe and activity to vital forces that have been 
marking time for centuries, simply on account of their 
constant antagonism. The powers would have done honor 
to themselves by creating a Balkanic Confederation stronger 
than the one they bhndly compelled to rise in revolt and 
force itself upon the world.^ Let us hope that the lesson 
will not be thrown away. It is still possible to bring about 
great and desirable changes by means of concerted action 
for the development of the African continent. This is a 
work that may lead the European powers to sink their 
differences. 

As I have often stated, in the French parliament and 
abroad, the furtherance of peace is intimately bound up 
with the increase of transport facilities. With great 
interest I saw how the problem presented itself at Pitts- 
burgh, and how it was being solved. Thousands of tons 
of steel are being cast every day. The railroad system 
has already cost $16,000,000,000, without reckoning the 
value of the land. It is only half finished, seeing 
that the western and southern parts of the United 
States are still more or less undeveloped. Over 50,000 
locomotives, the heaviest of which weigh 250 tons, and 

1 This argument has been developed in my introduction to the report of 
the commission of inquiry constituted by the Carnegie Endowment on the 
Balkan Wars. Washington : 2 Jackson Place. 



426 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

over 2,000,000 freight cars (much larger than ours, seeing 
that a single car can carry as much as 50 tons, making 2500 
tons for a train of 50 cars) are running on this system, and 
yet there are not enough. That this is only a beginning is 
shown by the number of steel cargo boats that are being built 
at Pittsburgh for the rivers, canals and inland bays, by the 
fact that the Minneapolis mills sometimes have to wait 
weeks for their grain, and by Mr. Hill's statement at St. 
Paul that, while the railroads are extending at the rate of 
27 per cent, the traffic is growing to the extent of 148 per 
cent. We might thus conclude that the development 
of Pittsburgh is unlimited and that this city has quite a 
monopoly of the steel supply, together with all the privileges 
that make success certain. Pittsburgh stands unrivaled. 
This was my conviction in 1907. 

2. Americans versus Americans 

In 191 1, I made a careful inspection of the north of the 
United States and the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin. 
I met men who knew the facts. I stopped at the principal 
ports on the Great Lakes. I spoke at meetings of chambers 
of commerce. When I returned to France, a savant asked 
me, with a tinge of irony, what I could possibly have found 
to talk about. What I did was to discuss questions that 
interested my hearers, and in this way I was enabled to 
understand the situation better. I can hardly think my 
system was a bad one, seeing that my time was too short 
to respond to the urgent invitations I received from all 
the great manufacturing associations. I noticed, to begin 
with, that Chicago is entering into competition with Pitts- 
burgh. As we know, Chicago has it sport on the lake, and it 
has built its own steel works, to which the ore is brought in 
boats from Duluth, thus eliminating railroad haulage. 



COMPETITION 427 

Pittsburgh's Competitors. Chicago 

"That doesn't matter to us," reply the Pittsburgh steel 
magnates. " Chicago has to send for its coal, which we have 
practically on the spot. The result is the same." ''Not 
at all," say the Chicago men ; ''it costs us less to bring our 
coal than you have to pay for the freight of your ore, and 
you have to pay freight for coal too, the only difference 
being that ours travels farther than yours — a very small 
matter, as the loading and unloading cost more than the 
haulage, over a short distance. We have therefore a very 
considerable advantage over you in not being obliged to 
convey our ore by rail, and this advantage is bound to give 
us the upper hand in the long run." 

Here we see the beginning of a national competition and 
a great struggle, to the general advantage. The greater 
the output of the steel for which the world of to-day has 
so many uses, the cheaper and the more abundant it will be. 

Railroads and Canals 

To complete the adjustment of my mental focus, I went 
from Chicago to Buffalo, from Lake Michigan to Lake 
Erie and Lake Ontario. There I had a vision of the future 
— not merely that of the United States but of the world. 
I saw the progress of transportation realized in three stages, 
each of which was a completion of the other. First of 
all came the railways that miraculously linked the states 
together and populated them. Next came the network 
of electric cars around the cities (the line that gets its 
power from Niagara Falls and follows both the Canadian 
and American sides of the river is a marvel). The cars 
themselves have to compete, in the cities, with underground 
or overhead lines, and motor omnibuses. Finally comes 
inland navigation, which fell behind in the United States, 



428 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

just as it did in Europe. Here we see the leveling effect 
of progress. The railways are congested, and have come to 
regard inland navigation as an auxiliary rather than a rival. 
Out of 50,000 miles of navigable rivers in the United States, 
25,000 miles are still unutilized, and out of about 5000 
miles of canals, half are more or less in use, without counting 
3000 miles of straits and bays, so that, in all, there is trans- 
port over about 60,000 miles of water, in addition to 250,000 
miles of railway. About half the canals were abandoned in 
1840 and, more recently, between 1880 and 1906, before 
the great crisis and during the railroad fever. They are 
too narrow for modern tonnage, and their equipment is 
out of date. 

Canals in the United States unfortunately came into 
existence only a short time before railway construction 
began, whereas in France, and in Europe generally, they 
had long formed part of the national systems of communica- 
tion. The United States have missed, or have endangered 
their possession of, an advantage to which Nature intended 
them to be entitled. Few countries are so well provided as 
theirs with a system of navigable waterways so favorable 
to the conveyance of heavy goods by slow freight. The 
Mississippi, flowing from the Canadian frontier to the 
Gulf of Mexico, over a distance of 5750 miles (the Danube 
is only 1875 and the Loire barely 650 miles long), ought to 
be the great central artery with its 44 tributaries, notably 
the Missouri, the Red River, the Arkansas and the Ohio. 
The Pacific coast is not so well supplied, but nevertheless 
has the Sacramento and the majestic Columbia. The tribu- 
taries to the Atlantic are numerous, commencing with the 
Hudson. River navigation, however, is irregular, risky 
and impossible at various times of the year; it is subject 
to risings, which are sometimes disastrous, to drought and 
to ice. For these reasons, the Americans originally went 
in largely for canals, which became the fashion, in an 



COMPETITION 429 

economic and financial sense. Canal sections were built 
here and there, to meet the requirements of states and 
private industries. It was all done too quickly and without 
supervision or any general plan. Michel Chevalier and 
Vetillard have shown in their valuable works what this 
disorganized undertaking was. The amount of money ex- 
pended upon it has been estimated at nearly $600,000,000. 

Erie Canal 

The first canal was, and still is, a success. It starts 
from Lake Erie, follows the south side of Lake Ontario, 
and connects the rich region of the Great Lakes with 
the navigable waterway of the Hudson and the port of 
New York. The need of this canal was felt as far back 
as the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the rivalry 
between French and English was at its height, and when the 
Hudson was trying to compete with the St. Lawrence as 
the principal outlet for Western produce ; but it was planned 
on too small a scale and had to be begun afresh. The real 
canal was provided for by a law passed April 17, 181 7, and 
was opened in 1825. It set an example which was followed 
by the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and others. 
It was a distinct factor, writes Pierre Bastian, in the prodi- 
gious development of the port of New York, as it reduced 
the journey between the Atlantic and Buffalo from six weeks 
to ten days and the cost of freight from 100 to 12 dollars 
a ton (Pierre Bastian). Cleveland owes its existence 
to the Ohio Canal, which was finished in 1836. Phila- 
delphia was connected with New York ; Baltimore and 
Washington undertook to cross the Allegheny chain and 
reach the Mississippi valley; and I have seen Penn- 
sylvania's great and capricious rivers escorted by rail- 
ways, carrying a great deal of traffic, on both banks, 
and paralleled by canals, most of which were disused. 



430 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

All this great effort of genius corresponded to the resources 
and future of the United States. Though the canals were 
an established fact before the railroad came in, they were 
in territory which was then of very little value and were 
built very cheaply, comparatively speaking, in spite of the 
scarcity of labor. Public opinion called for great public 
works. A long period of warfare had just closed in 1815, 
and the time had come to make up for the losses of the 
past by peaceful enterprises. Fulton's experiments on 
the Hudson and the possibilities of the steamboat did not 
justify any expectation that upstream navigation could be 
regularly carried on, but the canals seemed to meet all 
requirements. They nevertheless ended in failures and 
financial crises strongly resembling modern slumps. In 
reality they succumbed under the burden of early disap- 
pointments and to unexpected and formidable competition. 
The problem of steam traction on rails was solved by 
George Stephenson in 1829; and in 1830, when canal 
building was in its early days, the Americans already had 
23 miles of railroad. In 1850, they had 10,000 miles; 
in 1870, 53,000; in 1890, 105,000; and so on. How could 
a canal, which costs a great deal to build and is a slow means 
of transport, compete with such a simple and expeditious 
contrivance as a railroad? Rivalry would be even more 
out of the question for river tralG&c, with all its irregularity 
and uncertainty. The railways, of course, took advantage 
of the failure of the canals and bought up, at absurdly low 
prices, certain sections of canal, which they either aban- 
doned or filled up to make roadbeds for their own lines. 
They systematically boycotted the canals and waged a 
war of extermination against them. The result is that it 
is now almost impossible to create a general system of 
canals, though it could have been easily created at the 
beginning. This is yet another instance of the manner in 
which Americans have gone from one extreme to another 



COMPETITION 431 

in neglecting their waterways and even their oversea com- 
munications. For many years, maritime transport was 
in the hands of England, followed by France and Germany, 
before a single American company appeared on the scene.^ 
The worst of it now is that the American government has 
begun by another opposite extreme. Instead of being 
fostered and developed by the construction of steamers, 
American's international trade is being stifled at its very 
birth by the outlay on dreadnoughts. 

To confine ourselves to inland navigation, an attempt at 
a revival was made after the war of secession, during the 
great outburst of enterprise which occurred at that time. 
It began with the Chicago Canal, which connects the Great 
Lakes with the Mississippi watershed. The belief that 
railroads and canals must necessarily be hostile has been 
disproved by experience. It has been found that the 
number of travelers increases in proportion with the means 
of transport available. It is the same with freight. Inter- 
nal navigation comes to the assistance of the railways, takes 
the goods they do not care to handle and leaves the light 
and perishable articles to them. This is another instance 
of order and understanding produced by division of labor. 

Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the neigh- 
borhood of Niagara, where electricity is distributed over 
a very wide area and adds to the intense activity of pro- 
duction and circulation. Buffalo is a terminal station for 
the lake, canal, railway and electric car traffic, and since 
I first visited it in 1902, has become a transport capital. 
It is the starting point of the Erie Canal. The Buffalo 
people, far from neglecting this canal, do it full justice. 
They also regard it as a necessary regulator for the tariffs 
of the New York Central and all the other companies and 

^ It is only fair to say that this has not always been the case. Before 
the present navigation laws, there was a large mercantile marine; Ameri- 
can " Clipper " ships were numerous and celebrated for speed. 



432 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

systems which are accused of favoring Pittsburgh to the 
detriment of Buffalo. In conjunction with the chambers of 
commerce throughout the state of New York, they are pro- 
viding all the funds needed for the upkeep and development 
of the canal. One hundred and one million dollars has been 
voted for modernizing it, making it available for thousand- 
ton barges, and widening it throughout its course, which has 
been changed in various places, from the Great Lakes as far 
as the Hudson and New York on the one hand, and, on the 
other, as far as Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence and the 
ocean, so that it is now known as the '' Thousand- ton Barge 
Canal." 

The work was begun in 1905 and is making very good 
progress. Throughout the states there is a general ten- 
dency to concerted action with a view to "saving the forests 
and storing up the floods." This is a national movement 
undertaken, greatly to his credit, at the instigation of 
ex-President Roosevelt, so as to discipline the magnificent 
resources of his country and utilize them for navigation, 
power production, irrigation, etc., and we have seen that 
this plan meets with general approval. We must hope 
that it will be carried out without delay, so as to add to the 
national wealth and ward off terrible scourges. It will 
be the American equivalent of what is known in France 
as the Freycinet plan. 

Duluth 

Internal navigation, however, is not confined to rivers 
and canals. It expands considerably on the lakes during 
the summer. Buffalo is a long way from Duluth, and navi- 
gation is stopped during the winter. It is retarded by 
having to go through two long straits, and the journey takes 
four days in summer, but nevertheless the saving, as com- 
pared with the railroad, is enormous, and works out at a 
dollar a ton of pig-iron in favor of Buffalo. This has led 



COMPETITION 433 

to new competition with Pittsburgh in the form of ironworks 
that are fed directly from the quays ; and Buffalo itself has 
numerous competitors, such as Cleveland, Toledo on Lake 
Erie, etc. Duluth is also entering the field, as was only 
to be expected, and is no longer content merely to extract 
and export its ores. ''In conformity with the new prin- 
ciple of bringing the coal to the ore and not the ore to the 
coal, the Union Steel Corporation has put up very large 
steel works at Duluth, on the bank of the St. Louis River, 
and is making, principally, rails for sale in the West to the 
numerous young communities growing up in that vaguely 
defined empire, over which Duluth hopes to exercise 
economic sway." ^ 

We have thus lakes, railways, tramways — and rivers 
and canals will soon be added to the list — competing with 
one another to serve the cities, ports and centers of pro- 
duction and export. For the sake of clearness, I have dealt 
only with steel and coal, but it must not be forgotten that 
all this part of the north of the United States, which was 
known only for its timber fifty years ago, is now also 
producing what are perhaps still larger quantities of grain, 
cattle, meat and manufactured articles. What a wonder- 
ful machine is man, who decides and regulates all this 
competition and frantic activity, and what a number of 
machines and contrivances this competition has called into 
being to add to his productive power! How many im- 
provements upon improvements in the postal, telegraphic 
and automatic telephone services are at his disposal, pend- 
ing the practical application of wireless telegraphy ! The 
Buffalo business man is something like the water power 
of Niagara condensed into a wire. All you have to do is 
to put the wire into contact with the object in view, and 
you obtain all you need in light, heat, motion, power, speech 
and every kind of facility for management. 

1 A. Demangeon, in the " Annales de Geographic," March 15, 1913. 
2 F 



434 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Roads 

Not only canals but roads, which were still more neg- 
lected, are in process of revival. A great deal of money is 
being set aside for them by the state of New York and the 
Federal government itself. Both on the Atlantic and 
Pacific coasts I have seen the beginning of a great system 
of national highroads. Between the great lines of water 
and steel, roads are being spread out like the meshes of a 
net or the meshes of a spider^s web whose main ribs are 
already fixed. These road systems are still in embryo, 
but they are none the less available, not merely for bicy- 
cles but for motor cars, which will complete the work of 
organization, competition and speed. An order can now 
be given in an hour at all four extremities of the country. 
It is impossible to think, without a feeling akin to awe, 
of what the world will eventually become. How childish 
to try to go on governing it in accordance with the tra- 
ditions of by-gone times, and what a rude awakening is 
in store for the countries that cannot manage to adapt 
themselves to these changes ! 

La Salle Creek 

I took advantage of the numerous improvements effected 
in travel arrangements, and also of the kindness lavished 
upon me by my Buffalo friends, to accompany them on a 
pilgrimage into the past, to a place a little way above 
Niagara Falls. We went to La Salle Creek, the tiny little 
port whither La Salle's men carried all the materials for 
building his first ship, the first vessel that ever sailed 
the waters of the Great Lakes, the unlucky Grifon^ a 
masterpiece of perseverance and tenacity, sunk either by 
storms or treachery — no one knows which. In 1902 the 
Americans caused the following inscription to be let into 



COMPETITION 435 

the face of the rock : " Hereabouts, in May 1679, Robert 
Cavelier de la Salle built the Griffon, of sixty tons burthen, 
the first vessel to sail the upper lakes." Their object was 
to mark the spot where our heroic countryman and his 
companions themselves built, rigged and launched the vessel 
which ought to have been so useful to them, but would have 
been recorded as merely another heartbreaking disappoint- 
ment in a life of conflict had it not enjoyed the glory of 
being the forerunner of modern navigation on the Great 
Lakes. Another monument has been erected, not far away, 
to the memory of Father Hennepin, and there is a third, at 
St. Ignatius Point, on Lake Michigan, to Father Marquette. 
I took off my hat to these souvenirs, or humble seeds, 
and surveyed the immense harvest they have produced. 
What would these poor pioneers think of the continent 
they were so proud to explore on foot or in canoes, at the 
rate of a few miles a day or a week, at the cost of incal- 
culable exertions and risks, with no reward but ingrati- 
tude and death, if they could pay a visit to a business 
man in the country once inhabited by the long-departed 
buffalo, and note how, from one end of it to another, he 
can make his voice heard and his wishes felt in a few min- 
utes and set many other wants in motion ? It seems impos- 
sible that such a conflict of independent personalities, all 
working toward their own ends, can produce anything but 
chaos in the country our pioneers longed to civilize ; but, 
as a matter of fact, coordination exists, public spirit pre- 
dominates over individual energy, and out of intense 
American competition comes American prosperity, which is 
becoming more and more assured every day. 

Disciplining Niagara 

Order born of disciplined forces makes itself evident on 
all sides. It impressed me more at Buffalo than anywhere 



436 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

else, because here the power has a special and symbolical 
meaning; it is Niagara. The disciplining of Niagara is 
the climax of a long series of disinterested efforts that 
eventually overcame all obstacles. It is the ultimate 
triumph of our pioneers and also of the snow, which, like 
themselves, was not understood, and now, again, like them 
is estimated at its true worth — snow converted into 
heat, the snow that was their example and sets an example 
like theirs by penetrating in all directions and melting 
away, only to return in the form of unlimited advantages. 
It is a fact that only one of the innumerable resources 
afforded by the Great Lakes is utilized for navigation, 
which simply touches their fringe and leaves them intact. 
Millions of little springs hurry from mountain and plain 
to offer their services and combine to form inland seas. 
They do not confine themselves to carrying vessels, but 
help in all sorts of ways, and this is where the snows of 
Canada come in. Those splendid sheets of water known 
as Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie are quiet 
enough in ordinary weather, but nevertheless follow an 
invisible current, apparently purposeless, until their waters 
reach the point at which they flow in a narrower channel 
and dash down the falls of Niagara. Although they are 
a concrete example of untamable strength, these falls have 
let themselves be tamed, or harnessed as the Americans 
express it. They push and haul at man's command, in- 
stead of destroying. They separate themselves into as 
many thousands of horses and arms as they were origi- 
nally springs, and bring their assistance, in the form of 
light and power, to every inhabitant's house. Man has 
learned to understand them and to enlist them on his side 
by calling upon them to cooperate in his labors. They are an 
association of willing helpers taken into partnership by man. 
My companions, out of regard for the feelings aroused 
in my mind, returned to Buffalo without me, and I went 



COMPETITION 437 

alone to spend the night at the hotel overlooking the falls. 
It was quite at the beginning of the season. The hotel 
was almost empty, and the night was cold and clear — one 
of those nights that bring out our consciences as well as 
the stars. I sat for hours at my open window, gazing at 
Niagara the harmless. " What," I said to myself, " cannot 
man, who has disciplined this outburst of violence, dis- 
cipline himself? Is he who has mastered Nature's forces, 
and turned them to good account, to be the principal 
agent of destruction in the world? Did he combine all 
these forces merely to annihilate his own masterpieces, 
blight his own future and cause rivers of blood and tears 
to flow? " No ; such an outcome of civiHzation would be 
not only monstrous but paradoxical. The civilizing of 
every nation on earth is unlikely to be accomplished during 
the next generation, but the most civilized will no longer 
want war and will fight it as they have fought all the 
plagues of humanity one after another. 

Education by Gentleness 

What so many travelers admire at Niagara is not very 
different, except as regards size, from what can be seen in 
the Alps, Scandinavia, Africa and elsewhere, but its pro- 
portions are impressive and enable a better estimate of 
human progress to be made. I have seen plenty of these 
American power stations, wherein good order, silence and 
soHtude prevail, but one that produces 150,000 horse power 
and can go up to 200,000 if necessary, such as can be 
seen at Niagara, and is run, or rather superintended, by 
one man, with an assistant to take his place in case of 
accident, is nevertheless something calculated to make 
one think. What a lesson for a whole people lies in the 
regiments of machines that stand in long Hues in the fac- 
tories and houses and along the quays and are driven by 



438 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

the silent turbine — an army of unfailing forces posted 
everywhere and led by staffs of workmen ! Yes, this is 
education in gentleness and reason itself ! A non-commis- 
sioned officer at drill, a man who commands other men or 
is merely riding a horse, is more or less prone to anger. 
The best of our young men are only too much inclined, 
when they are going through the miHtary riding school, 
or are at the maneuvers, to use whip and spur and oaths. 
How often do we hear the word of command to '4et him 
have it" that drives the rider's heel into his horse's side! 
And then we have the carter, who is often compelled to 
exact too much from his horse, toiling uphill with too heavy 
a load, and there is also the cabman ! 

Collective Labor 

With the machine tool and the automobile, all this angry 
feeling vanishes. A mere gesture, a sign, a sharp move- 
ment or even a look acts on the machine. When we can 
cause a catastrophe merely by turning a handle, we get 
out of the way of losing our self-control. What is the use 
of being angry with a machine that merely obeys you? 
It is different, of course, with a horse or a child or a woman ; 
it is always his or her fault ! But, with a machine, gentle- 
ness becomes a power — the greatest power, in fact. In 
this sense, the machine really trains the man. All the 
time and energy he used to waste on fruitless struggles he 
now utilizes for self-control. He is learning to despise 
futile fury. A new harmony regulates the sway of man 
over his will and, consequently, the relations between men 
themselves. Discipline has come down from the heights 
of science into the workshop and, with the help of a hand- 
ful of willing workers, is achieving miracles of collective 
effort that were accomplished in olden times only by 
slavery. In sports just as much as in work and, if need be. 



COMPETITION 439 

in national defense, American action is voluntary and 
combined. It is a rhythmical movement that may be lik- 
ened to the respiration of a nation. 

This is an incalculably important piece of progress. 
When I returned to Buffalo, I found confirmation of it 
in what might be described, in this chapter on transporta- 
tion facilities, as a slow race. 

Another Moving House 

My readers will remember how surprised I was when I 
saw houses moved at Seattle. I was driving in an auto- 
mobile on one of the broad boulevards at Buffalo when 
one of my cicerones pointed out the bishop's house to me. 
I immediately asked to have the automobile stopped. The 
house was being moved, and what a house it was ! Those 
at Seattle were merely frame buildings, but this was one 
of the handsome villas that American architects are now 
building for their wealthiest clients. I can still see it. A 
photograph of the house lies before me, with that of Mr. 
Gustave T. Britt, the contractor who carried out these 
extraordinary operations and whom I called the Napoleon of 
transportation ! The house occupied by the Catholic bishop 
of Buffalo is a large and handsome three-story brick and 
granite building. The ground floor, under which is a high 
basement, is built of granite and has very large windows. 
There is a portico, with marble columns, and a terrace on 
top, over the front steps. A wing projects on one side, 
and, on the other, there is a gable. There is also an out- 
side veranda with an open balustrade and six small 
columns supporting another terrace. The roof is high- 
pitched and has pointed turrets of the pepper-box shape, 
above which rises a large and handsome brick chimney 
stack. The house does not look as if it had much stability, 
in spite of its size. 



440 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Nothing inside the building was removed. The gas 
and water mains were simply cut. Not a single piece of 
furniture, picture, statue or vase was taken away for 
safety, and for obvious reasons; for, if the balance had 
been disturbed by ever so little, the chimney stack, and not 
the clock, would have been the first to fall ; but the whole 
process was so well combined, and the army of volunteer 
workers showed such intelligence and discipline that it 
was possible to move the whole house. This is how it was 
done, so far as I can convey the information kindly given 
me by Mr. Gustave T. Britt. 

You put temporary foundations, consisting of long 
horizontal beams, in the place of the permanent brick and 
granite foundations. You prepare a perfectly flat bed, 
and you insert transverse wooden rollers between the bed 
and the temporary foundations. All you have to do after 
this is to apply pressure to the end of the temporary foun- 
dations, which start off, with the house on top of them, and 
make their way, over the bed prepared for them, to the 
selected site. 

The pressure, as I will proceed to explain, is applied by 
means of screws, and here we have an illustration of the 
rhythm of concerted action which the slightest disorder or 
lack of attention would suffice to upset. All the screws are 
turned in unison by gangs of workmen, who are responsible 
for them, under the direction of a signaler. A whistle, 
blown once or several times, usually gives the signal. 
Each turn of the screws moves the house one eighth of an 
inch. When the building has reached its new site, the tem- 
porary foundations are removed in sections and permanent 
substructures are put in their place. Everything inside 
remains in its usual position, and the occupants might have 
stayed there too. 

Why was the house moved ? Simply because it was too 
near the church, which was too far to one side, and it was 



COMPETITION 441 

decided that, when the house was out of the way, the 
church should be moved too. By this time the work has 
probably been done and forgotten. 

We cannot look within ourselves, and only a foreigner, 
like myself, stops to notice these things and learn from 
them. The bishop's house, moving in obedience to the 
workmen, who are themselves directed by signals but none 
the less understand their work and do it without a word, is 

I symbolical of a whole country, including the working class, 

* in process of organization. 

The Americans do not know it, but, without being 
militarized, they are drilled and a hundred times readier 
than they were a hundred years ago to take up arms and 
conquer if attacked. They have been so well educated by 
discipline, sobriety and muscular development that they 
are superior to any armies they might try to form on the 
spur of the moment. Those who advise them to give up 
the advantage of this exceptional education and become 
contaminated by the example of our European armies have 
failed to realize the real strength of the United States — 
the education of liberty. 

The system of acting on the masses by method and good 
organization has become so general that I have found it 
in operation more or less all over the United States. An- 
other remarkable feat was accomphshed at Syracuse. 
An extra story had to be put on to a house, but, instead 
of taking off the roof, it was found simpler to raise it to 
the required height and to insert the new story into the 
space thus obtained. The screw pressure was exerted 
upward instead of horizontally, and, as the roof rose, the 
intervening wall space was simply filled in with wooden 
blocks, which were afterwards replaced by the required 
materials. Archimedes is evidently more appreciated in 
the New World than in the old. 

I cannot adequately express my gratitude to the Ameri- 



442 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

cans to whom I am indebted for these observations: to 
Mr. Francis Almy and especially to Mr. John G. Eppendorff 
as regards Buffalo. They were kind enough to be present 
with me, in spite of the broiling sunshine, at one more 
process that I wanted to see with my own eyes — the auto- 
matic unloading of the Duluth ore boats on reaching their 
destination. This is the final link in the chain of compe- 
tition, forged by the new steel manufacturing centers, with 
Pittsburgh, and this is where I finally realized how freight 
charges can be cut down and how one competitor can re- 
duce his expenses in comparison with the others. It is 
like a race for a prize which will go to whomever can carry 
the greatest weight with the least expenditure of effort. 

Unloading Ore automatically at Buffalo 

While the ore from Duluth for the Pittsburgh steel works 
has to be unloaded into railroad cars at Cleveland, the 
Buffalo works, as I have said, are on the wharves alongside 
which the same boats are moored. A single one of these 
magnificent boats, 600 feet long, can contain 12,000 tons of 
ore', poured into it as I have described. Four immense 
bridges, shaped like viaducts, travel on a rail track laid 
parallel to the quays. Each of these bridges forms a con- 
nection between the boat and the top of the blast furnace. 
Under the flooring of the bridge, a steel hand, — not an arm 
this time, — suspended by wires, moves backwards and 
forwards. When this hand, or " clam " comes over the boat, 
it goes down, plunges into the heap of ore, seizes as much 
as it can hold, picks it up and deposits it either in great 
heaps or mountains on the other side of the quay or in com- 
partments, with movable bottoms, which empty them- 
selves in turn, by means of a chain of small cars and a sys- 
tem of very simple elevators, into the blast furnaces, the 
latter having been previously supplied with layers of coke 



COMPETITION 443 

and lime. The stock of ore is always considerably in excess 
of current requirements, so as to have enough to keep the 
furnaces going in winter, when boat traffic is stopped. The 
bridge and the hand are worked by one man, and there is 
no one else to be seen on the quay or in the boat. The 
place looks deserted and dead ; in reaHty, it is full of the 
concentrated Hfe of a crowd of workmen. The saving in 
labor, shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, time and money 
has been figured out, and it is found that the cost of un- 
loading a ton is reduced from 5 cents to less than half a 
cent. We must not forget that Buffalo is not the only 
port in the United States to compete with Pittsburgh, and 
that, as far away as Seattle, we have seen how manufac- 
turers are organizing the output and transport of steel and 
iron, to say nothing of other commodities. I might bestow 
equal praise, if not more, on Toledo, Detroit and especially 
Cleveland, which city by no means confines itself to trans- 
shipping ore but has ten blast furnaces of its own — some 
at Cleveland itself, on the Cuyahoga River, and others at 
Youngstown. They are all of the very best kind, espe- 
cially the one at the port of Lorraine, and are mostly in the 
hands of competing owners. We must also remember that 
a city like Cleveland has three thousand factories, including 
very large petroleum refineries, and the works that supply 
other ports, such as Buffalo, Cleveland and Duluth, with 
their gigantic traveHng bridges for unloading ore. Land 
has appreciated so much in these places that a friend of 
mine, who had bought an 187-acre lot for a mere song, has 
just sold it for nine hundred thousand dollars to a blast- 
furnace company, which paid this price for it because it 
had a water frontage. Another factor in the situation is 
that there are plenty of banks ready to advance money to 
manufacturers, that a Land Bank is in process of formation 
to encourage business enterprises, and that these enterprises 
are being carried out in every direction, in Texas and 



444 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Colorado just as freely as in New England. In view of 
all these facts, one is tempted to say that the Americans, 
in virtue of the magnificent resources of their soil, of their 
great industriousness and particularly their methodical 
habits, of their modern and perfected appliances, and of 
the merciless competition among their numerous produc- 
ing centers — among different factories in the same city, 
among the cities themselves and the states of the Union 

— have attained the maximum of human effort and can 
defy all human competition. It seems as if they have placed 
themselves in the forefront of the race for development 
of transportation which is inseparable from the other race 

— output ; it seems as if their victory must be as certain 
as it is well deserved. It seems . . . ? 

3. Canadian Competition 

The victory seems certain, but the transport race is not 
merely a national one. It is stimulated in the United 
States, as well as elsewhere, by foreign competition. I 
was able to see this distinctly at Buffalo, which is a frontier 
city. All I had to do was to leave United States territory 
and go over to the left, or Canadian, bank of the Niagara. 
What remains for the United States to do, if they are to 
keep ahead, is at once evident here. All the rival enter- 
prises we have admired are confronted by another rival ; 
and the eternal principle that one form of progress shall 
be outstripped by another is exemplified. The Americans 
are our masters in business activity, but there is no proof 
that their pupils, who are adopting their methods in the 
hope of doing still better, and are profiting by their experi- 
ence, will not take part in the race with a still more juvenile 
self-confidence, with constantly improved mechanical ap- 
pliances of every kind, and with new men, new resources 
and new chances. 



COMPETITION 445 

The Two Banks of the Niagara 

A comparison between the two sides of the Niagara 
suggests that there is already cause for uneasiness, from the 
Americans' point of view. On their side — which, to be 
just, is less favored by Nature than the other, the largest 
waterfall being on the Canadian bank — there are traces 
of the disorder caused by a determination to work every- 
thing out to the fullest extent. There is a simply barbar- 
ous collection of factories and rough, temporary structures 
for utilizing various forms of power. It looks hke an 
enlarged reproduction of one of those parasitic Turkish 
towns that profane the majesty of the holy places. Around 
the wonderful curve of blue waters falling headlong into 
whirlpools and mist, there was once a belt of vegetation, 
rocks, cascades and clear waters, but it has been ravaged 
and polluted. Public-spirited men, such as those who 
accompanied me, are now trying to atone for the mischief 
and to plead the cause of art, of Nature, and a better con- 
ception of what befits the interest and the honor of their 
country. Vegetation's right to existence has been revived 
in favor of a park on the American side, above the falls, 
and a very intelligent curator, who learned something from 
our horticulturists at Orleans and Angers, is doing his 
best to make good the damage. This is a sign of progress 
which is greatly to the credit of pubKc spirit; but, below 
the falls, the barbarians triumph with impunity. They 
have managed to ruin the shore, and even the reputation 
of the Niagara River. 

Everything on the Canadian side is not perfect. The 
authorities were ill-advised when they permitted the con- 
struction of some Tyrolean pavilions, and posts with wires 
which are certainly out of place here, right in line with the 
view of the falls ; but we must not expect too much (Paris 
is guilty of spoiling the sunset with that wretched building, 



446 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

the Trocadero, which is worthy of what it was intended to 
commemorate), and let us admit that the Canadians have 
treated Niagara with comparative respect. They have a 
fine park, and their electric stations are not only the most 
powerful but the least aggressive. They represent real 
strength — the kind that passes unnoticed. In this they 
are manifestly superior. When the Americans profaned 
their side of Niagara, they made a mistake that belongs to 
the history of the United States and was an unconscious 
challenge to true civilization. 

Niagara, however, is only one of the points at which 
Canadian activity shows itself. Let us proceed further, 
in our study of the progress of the young Dominion, with 
our eyes and ears open. 

Revenge after Prolonged Disdain 

Canada enjoys a singular privilege : man has neglected 
it. Both the strength and weakness of the United States 
are due to the fact that men, in their haste to be rich, 
turned their backs on Canada and hurried southward to 
land that was easier to work ; and the United States were 
both enriched and bled to the last drop. For more than 
a century, Canada has suffered from the discredit we cast 
on it, both purposely and through ignorance, so as to justify 
our abandonment of it. Voltaire's description of Canada 
as a few square miles of snow satisfied us for a great many 
years. Even the snow was not enough, and we buried 
Canada under an avalanche of contempt. In this way 
Canada was twice protected. It was her salvation, and 
will eventually make her fortune. Thanks to this dis- 
grace, Canada has husbanded the natural resources squan- 
dered by the United States. She is not called upon to make 
up for her neighbors' faults, and, in fact, she has profited 
by their mistakes. 



COMPETITION 447 



A Clear Field 



Canada has become an immense reserve and a field 
for the most modern experiments. It is like having 
a free hand and the advantage of seeing a previous 
attempt made next door under your own eyes and of the 
first lesson of the past in a New World, in addition to 
having the assistance of the latest scientific discoveries. 
The determination of the western part of the United States 
to escape from the domination of the East shows itself 
to an even greater extent in the North and throughout 
Canada, especially in the central and western provinces. 
It must not be forgotten in our consideration of this 
subject, that the total area of the Dominion of Canada 
is larger than that of the United States and comprises more 
than half of North America. 

Four Months of Warmth 

I am quite aware that the greater part of Canadian 
territory is covered with ice and snow during a con- 
siderable portion of the year, and that there are 
such things as very long winters and early frosts; but 
four months of warmth and long days are sufficient 
to bring the crops to maturity. The rivers may be 
frozen over, but their currents still keep the dynamos 
going, and the immense forests keep up their supply of 
timber for building, wood pulp for paper making, and furs. 
Moreover, there are few snowfalls in the North, and the 
railways and mines are not interfered with. The snow 
helps to preserve all sorts of produce, especially the sup- 
phes of game and fish for the London market, and it also 
provides roadways. Judging by what the Canadians say, 
their snow must be regarded as one of their most valuable 
assets. 



448 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

The Population 

The smallness of the population and the consequent lack 
of capital form the real weakness of the country at present, 
but this is simply a repetition of the history of the United 
States, and, in this respect also, Canada will profit by her 
neighbor's experience. Canada wants quality as much 
as quantity in her population. She tries to choose her 
immigrants, like the United States, and accepts only those 
who are physically and morally the healthiest, youngest 
and best fitted to succeed. She rigorously rejects, as is well 
known, every one who appears ''undesirable." Her im- 
migration, like that of the United States, originated in 
the most energetic class of Europeans, and they have 
taken root. The French pioneers' blood was not shed 
in vain. It will stand comparison with the English Puri- 
tan blood combined with that of the ''cavaliers" in the 
south of the United States. Such men as Laurier, Louis 
Jette, Cartier, Marchand and Gouin are in themselves a 
source of national wealth. The Canadian population is 
not lacking in numbers after all. It looks very small in 
comparison with that of the United States, but it is increas- 
ing steadily. The population of the United States will 
soon attain one hundred millions. It has risen at the rate 
of more than a million a year since the War of Secession. 
This growth is especially pronounced in the direction of 
the Pacific. The center of population is moving steadily 
westward. While the population in five or six of the 
Eastern states remains almost stationary, or has not risen 
more than 20 or 30 per cent in ten years (from 1900 
to 1910), it has grown more than 50 per cent in all the 
states on the Pacific coast and on the northwest frontier, 
that is to say, close to Canada, which profits thereby. 
Every year the current of immigration overflows the bor- 
der, and nearly half the agricultural population of the 



COMPETITION 449 

central Canadian provinces is made up of the surplus from 
western American farms. In the same way, as we have 
seen, a large proportion of the inhabitants of British Colum- 
bia come from Seattle and the states of Washington and 
Oregon. One objection raised is that these American 
colonists will annex Canada, as those from Texas will 
annex Mexico. There is no way of annexing a world, and 
the United States will resist the temptation (which has 
proved fatal to so many empires) of experimenting with 
excessive expansion before they have completed their own 
growth. American colonists in Canada become Canadians 
because they find themselves well off in their new country. 
They believe in the saying ^^uhi bene, ibi patria'^ and their 
real roots, still quite young and fresh, are in Europe rather 
than in the United States. 

In any case, the population of Canada, from Halifax 
to Vancouver — from the Atlantic to the Pacific, has 
doubled in thirty years. In 191 1 the total stood at 
7,204,838, or about two milKons more than in 1901 — four 
times as many people as in Norway, but only a twelfth of 
the number in the United States. The most important 
point in connection with the increase of the population in 
Canada is, not the total, but the manner of its distribution 
among the provinces. The proportion in favor of the 
Middle West and West is even greater than in the United 
States. British Columbia has doubled its total, rising from 
178,657 in 1901 to 392,480 in 191 1. In very much the 
same way, the number of inhabitants in Manitoba has 
advanced from 255,000 to 455,000. Saskatchewan has 
grown fourfold, from 91,000 to 492,000, and Alberta five- 
fold, from 73,000 to 374,000. There are declines, on the 
other hand, in a few provinces, but they are insignificant. 
The population of Ontario has increased by several hundred 
thousand inhabitants, from 2,182,000 to 2,573,000, and the 
province of Quebec has also risen from 1,648,000 to 2,008,000. 

2G 



4SO AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Even if we consider only the total population of Canada, 
it promises well if we compare it with the beginnings of the 
United States, whose population increased to about the 
same extent during the first thirty years, from 1790 to 1820 ; 
that is to say, about two millions every ten years. We must 
also multiply the present number of colonists by the very 
great number and power of the machinery in use, and this 
explains why there was no boastfulness in what Sir Wilfrid 
Laurier said after casting a glance behind and another next 
door: ''The twentieth century will be the Canadian 
century." 

Another certain sign of general progress and activity is 
provided by the growth of new cities. Winnipeg's popu- 
lation has risen from 42,340 in 1901 to 128,157. Edmon- 
ton had 12,823 inhabitants in 1901, and has now nearly 
five times this number, 57,045 ; and Saskatoon has in- 
creased from 7157 to 51,145. This is a garden city planned 
on purely modern lines. Comparatively old cities have 
also prospered greatly. Vancouver has gained to the extent 
of 100,000 in less than thirty years, Toronto 317,538 and 
Montreal 355,480. These last figures are instructive. It 
was, I found, a city that has been like a vast building yard 
for the past ten years. It is being remade, and is the dy- 
namometer of Canadian prosperity and the key to all the 
lines of communication between East and West. It is the 
real capital of the three eastern provinces, with Toronto, 
Ottawa and Quebec, with its magnificent rivers, cut out 
on a truly American scale, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa and 
the innumerable Hudson Bay afiiuents. The country of 
the future, however, begins at Winnipeg, and, beyond 
Manitoba, in the two provinces of Saskatchewan and 
Alberta, and also northward, 150 miles from Edmonton, 
where there is good wheat land ; and then we have that 
magnificent country, British Columbia, whose climate is 
softened by the Pacific currents. 



COMPETITION 451 

Agriculture 

Among these immense provinces, several of which are 
as large as France or Germany, we again find emulation 
in the output of agricultural, natural and manufactured 
produce. They have rivers and forests, the germ of all 
the rest. The forests are of enormous size, and their 
timber, floated down during about four months of the 
year, provides constant work for the woodcutter, who is of 
French stock and descended from our bold French foresters 
— a valuable element in Canadian colonization. The 
factories also keep going throughout the year, thanks to 
another and irrepressible form of energy, water. The 
fisheries constitute an immense resource, ranging from 
whales down to salmon, sturgeon and trout. The value 
of the fish sold reaches five million dollars a year, but is 
nevertheless inferior to that of the game and far behind 
that of the furs and skins. Many sportsmen, and also 
colonists, are attracted by the good shooting obtainable. 
Several national parks, notably the one at Banff, have been 
reserved. We are only beginning to form some idea of 
the richness of the mineral deposits, ranging from the gold 
in Alaska, silver, nickel, cobalt, petroleum and coal to the 
iron at Fort WiUiam, Duluth's rival as a lake port. But 
all this wealth is of little account in comparison with that 
of agriculture. Despite the rigor of its cHmate, Canada, 
thanks to patience and observation, has been made to pro- 
duce practically everything. The Ontario orchards vie with 
those of Columbia in vegetables, fruits, apples, peaches, 
plums and cherries, ripened by four months of sunshine 
and short nights. Canning factories are already at work. 
The grapes even produce a sweet wine appreciated by the 
Canadians. North of British Columbia and Alberta, be- 
tween the Great Slave Lake and the Peace River, the super- 
intendent of forests, Mr. Elihu Stewart, is advocating a 



452 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

methodical exploration of the country. In the valley of 
the Mackenzie River, that gigantic tributary of the frozen 
Arctic Ocean, this official, on July 15, saw potato plants 
in flower, ripe peas, tomatoes, onions, rhubarb, beetroot 
and cabbages ; strawberries, blackberries and currants had 
been already gathered. Some Indians who came from the 
frontier of Alaska had lost two of their dogs through the 
heat. Modern methods of locomotion make it possible 
to inhabit and develop these districts of thermic ex- 
tremes, which were formerly almost inaccessible. From 
fifteen to eighteen hours of sunshine every day for three 
or four months spells wealth. Without going so far afield, 
we have only to look at the Manitoba farms — some of 
them model ones — which are becoming famous for their 
variety of produce, in which not only cereals but maize, 
hops and tobacco find a place ; for their pastures, on which 
horses, cattle, hogs and sheep are raised ; for all kinds of 
poultry and dairy produce, from milking by machinery 
(a process of doubtful value) to incubating eggs and mak- 
ing butter and cheese. Even bees have been acclimatized. 
The honey was frozen at first, but means have been found 
to shelter them from the cold and let them increase and 
multiply. They are not only productive, but they fertilize 
the country and are thus doubly advantageous. West- 
ward, and still farther westward, are the ranches, the herds 
of cattle and, above all, the prairie, Canada's real store- 
house of abundance. It is a vast and uninterrupted ex- 
panse of wheat land, in itself quite a France or a Hungary 
for this cereal. The crop ripens in a hundred days and 
the barley and oats require even less. There is unlimited 
space, without restrictions, as well as light and continuous 
heat, followed by a long winter's rest, during which the 
land renews itself beneath the snow, and the farmer can 
vanish too and travel elsewhere. Cultivation begins with 
the month of March, and is very soon done. 



COMPETITION 453 

MotocuUure 

The American teams of thirty horses are out of date. 
Steam and gasoline have beaten them. As I have said, every 
farmer has his own automobile. There are already 5000 
motor plows in the three central provinces, and, in a few 
years, they will be reckoned by hundreds of thousands. 
In this endless plain they have ample scope. Each motor 
hauls ten, twelve or twenty plows, and moves at a rate 
of three miles an hour. Even if this were an exaggeration 
and the real speed be only a mile and a quarter, a machine 
hauling twenty plows will cut 25 miles of furrows in an 
hour, 250 miles in ten hours, and 2500 miles in a week. 
These figures still haunted me when I returned to France. 
In my own district, where there is rich agricultural land, I 
have a farm of 75 acres on which the farmer, a good worker, 
wears out his arms, his horses and his plows. 

Pere Monnier 

Stopping by the roadside, I see a strange form in a small 
field on the further side of the brook. Two arms are working 
a hooked implement that digs into the earth, turns it over, 
comes up and goes down again, and so on for hours and 
hours, just as it has done for generations and centuries. 
These two arms belong to two shoulders bent down to the 
ground, and the shoulders belong to an old French peasant 
with a bent back, plowing his furrow just as he did when he 
was young and as all the old peasants still do. ''Is that 
you, pere Monnier?" I ask, and he replies with a cheerful, 
''Yes, it is," without standing up — a feat which he is no 
longer able to perform. There are a great many others 
who cannot stand upright — a great many old tillers of 
the soil who, with their heads close to their knees, go on 
uncomplainingly with their few yards of furrows, while 



454 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

the Canadian machine cuts its twenty-five miles in an 
hour. 

If the farmer does not own one of these machines, he 
hires it; and when the plowing is finished, it does the 
harrowing, sowing and rolling, reaps, binds and thrashes 
the wheat and hauls it to the nearest railway station, 
unless the farmer is afraid of the men who make corners 
and has bought or hired a movable shed, with tin com- 
partments, in which he stores his grain. He gets rid of it, 
however, in most cases. The process is very simple. The 
station is provided with storehouses, elevators and sheds. 
He obtains a receipt certifying to the quality of his wheat. 
This document is as good as money ; the banks will discount 
it, and he can use it in payment for the goods he orders 
from the East. When the machine has nothing else to do, 
it pumps up water, saws wood and crushes grain and 
potatoes. It is just as necessary for the Canadian farmer 
to be a good mechanic as it is for ours to know how to look 
after horses. The more isolated the farm, the more the 
farmer tries to learn, and he is helped to do so. In addi- 
tion to the Dominion and provincial governments and the 
municipalities, which do a great deal, the railway companies, 
whose best customer he is, develop his education and, 
consequently, his productive capacity. They have spe- 
cially fitted cars in which competent lecturers pay visits 
to the country stations and give practical addresses and 
advice at fixed dates upon all sorts of agricultural ques- 
tions. 

Thanks to these forms of progress, the output of Cana- 
dian wheat has risen from 5,400,000 hectoliters in 1876 to 
362,500,000 in 1909. The exports, which totaled only 
2,340,956 bushels in 1885, came to 49,741,350 bushels in 
1 910. The comparative smallness of this figure is due to 
inadequate means of transport. Otherwise the total 
would be much larger. 



COMPETITION 



455 



Three Transcontinental Railways 

Here we come to another wonder. The Canadians have 
been quite mad over their railways. One would have 
thought that a single transcontinental line was a good deal 
in competition with the American lines, but the Canadians 
now have three, and even this is not enough. I am told 
that half the wheat crop was left on the land last year be- 
cause there was no means of taking it to market. Sir Wil- 
liam van Home, who, like Lord Mount Stephen, was one 
of the earhest advocates of transcontinental lines across 
Canada, and is an ex-president of the Canadian Pacific 
Railway, a man of action and initiative who has taken up 
all sorts of successful enterprises, told me, in his gallery of 
French and other European masterpieces at Montreal, what 
he considered ought to be the function of railroads in Canada. 
''The railways are hampered only by the superabundance 
of traffic," he said. ''We are in the same position as the 
United States. What Mr. James J. Hill told you about the 
lack of terminal facilities is as true here as it is there. We 
plan for twenty years, and the accommodation is exhausted 
in five. We have to remove our freight yards outside the 
cities, but this is a small matter in comparison with the 
essential and urgent questions of lines. In this respect 
we shall never to able to move fast or far enough. The 
railroad is the best pioneer. Our western farms are iso- 
lated from one another, instead of being near railway sta- 
tions. In the agricultural districts we ought to have so 
many lines that no farm would be more than ten miles from 
the nearest. There should be parallel lines every ten or 
twenty miles, each connected with the next. This is what 
will be done and is being done, and this is what we need 
for the conveyance of future crops; otherwise, we shall 
go on being overcrowded, there will be a slackening of 
production and dissatisfaction will show itself, Our trans- 



456 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

continental lines extend into the United States, beyond 
St. Paul, but they are insufficient. They are merely a 
connecting link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans 
and end at the great new cities, created by us, where our 
fleets of vessels, both slow and fast, are stationed. Speed 
is less important than cheapness for a great many articles. 
Our mail steamers, cargo boats and four-masted sailing 
ships form an extension of our railways. We are the high- 
road to China. Henceforth the flow of our exports will 
make its way east and west along our railways, following 
a current that sets both ways. This current, strong as it 
is, needs others to help it." 

Interior Navigation 

^* Far from apprehending competition from them, we 
want them. We need help from our rivers, great 
stretches of which are available during long days of 
summer, quite long enough for the quantities of heavy 
goods, timber, ores and cereals they are likely to be 
called upon to transport. We need the lakes, too, and 
cannot exist without them. The tonnage of the shipping 
that goes through the Sault Ste. Marie Canal is three times 
as great as that of the Suez Canal, and the tonnage of the 
vessels plying on the Great Lakes is six times as large. Ore 
alone represents 41 million tons. We shall never have 
too many Canadian or American routes. We do not con- 
sider the American ports as rivals. Fort William competes 
with Duluth, but both are needed for the development of 
our transports. Navigation on the lakes themselves will 
have to be shortened." 

In addition to the information given me by Sir William 
van Home and his successor, Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, 
my friend Dandurand, formerly president of the Canadian 
senate, has supplied me with facts that give some idea 



COMPETITION 457 

of what the future of canals in Canada is Hkely to be. 
The Welland Canal, which is considerably shorter than 
the American canal, will attract vessels plying between 
Lakes Erie and Ontario. Ten years ago, in 1901, the ton- 
nage passing through Canadian canals was 5,665,259; in 
1910 it was 42,990,608. A great scheme for still further 
shortening the route is under consideration. If it were 
carried out, ships coming from Sault Ste. Marie would 
travel by way of Georgian Bay, the French River and 
Ottawa to Montreal and the ocean. This route would 
bring Fort William within 4123 miles of Liverpool, or 806 
miles less than by way of New York ! 

Hudson Bay 

And this is not all. When I was at Quebec, the Prime 
Minister of the province, Sir Lomer Gouin, told me the 
story of his conversion as regards Hudson Bay railroads. 
I had hitherto supposed that the Hudson Bay district 
contained nothing but Eskimos, reindeers. Polar bears and 
ice (and I believe he had the same idea), but he now regards 
it as a great reservoir of natural resources, to be developed 
in accordance with the fixed principle of limiting cultiva- 
tion and transportation to four or five months of the year 
and leaving eight months for manufactures. 

The old provinces all want to extend their frontiers. 
They complain that their interests were not considered, 
and they demand a hinterland extending as far as the Bay, 
and they all, more or less, want railways. Both the Liberal 
and Conservative parties have pledged themselves to the 
construction of a railroad starting from Saskatchewan and 
Manitoba and ending at Fort Churchill or Fort Nelson. 
The line has already been carried as far as Le Pas. This 
does not prevent ambitious Edmonton from having a scheme 
of its own, and Quebec is thinking about St. James' Bay 



458 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and Rupert Bay, which can be easily reached by the great 
Nottaway River. It is only a matter of 275 miles — five 
or six hours' journey — to connect with the transcontinental 
line. There are two objects in view, the one serving as a 
complement to the other. Firstly are transports, which 
will relieve the country of its plethora of produce and enable 
it to be exported cheaply, from July 15 to Sept. 15, in spite 
of the floes and icebergs, of which Canadians seem to think 
very little ; and secondly are the natural riches of the soil 
and water, which need no further description. The im- 
mense promontory of Ungava, hitherto marked on the 
maps like an unexplored desert, is in itself an inexhaustible 
reservoir of wealth. To arguments based on the intense 
cold and a latitude between fifty and sixty degrees, geogra- 
phers reply that latitude is not everything, and that there 
are very rich and productive countries in Europe, such as 
Holland, England and Scotland, between the fortieth and 
fiftieth degrees, while beyond the sixtieth we have Norway, 
Sweden and northern Russia. Moreover, only the coast 
of Hudson Bay is frozen in winter, and the bay is open 
to navigation seven or eight months of the year. Before 
long we shall see Hudson Bay competing with the Great 
Lakes, whereon navigation is also stopped in winter but is 
prodigiously active in summer. 

Unlike what would happen in Europe, all this will be 
done very quickly, the development of transport in North 
America being stimulated to the highest pitch by the 
ambition to establish a steady stream of traffic over a 
globe-circling line of communication before the opening of 
the Panama Canal. 

While all these statesmen and business men, on both 
sides of the frontier, were giving me their accounts of the 
colossal rival enterprises they have planned and will carry 
out, I thought of the delays that France, in spite of her 
national characteristic of alertness, has to endure. I 



COMPETITION 459 

do not refer to the delay that must necessarily occur while 
a scheme is being planned and thought out in advance, two 
processes which constitute one of the advantages of her 
long experience. Neither do I mean the delay inseparable 
from certain forms of progress, which would be endangered 
by too great haste. On the contrary, I beHeve in slowness 
and distrust the intoxication born of speed. I observe 
that sailing ships and windmills are reviving and that, 
although we have automobiles, we cannot do without 
horses. The ox, the mule, the donkey, the dog, the goat, 
the reindeer, the camel and the elephant will continue to 
discharge their humble duty as means of transport between 
the center of production and the road, port or station. They 
will still be the little streams that make the great rivers. 
No ; I was thinking how slow we are in coming to a decision 
and how incapable we seem to be of carrying out public 
works which are not less urgent than those accomplished in 
America and are much less costly, much easier and are in- 
dispensable to complete what the Americans have begun. 
Through not doing our share of the work in time, we break 
the line of communication and cause it to turn elsewhere. 

Our Slowness. The Port of Brest 

The port of Brest is an instance. Nature, which has 
always lavished her gifts on France, gave her, at Brest, a 
splendid, deep harbor opening right on to the ocean highway 
and constituting a natural entrance which, if properly 
fitted up, would attract all the American and Asiatic traffic 
to Paris and central Europe. It would save twelve hours' 
sea voyage and considerably decrease the risk of collision 
in the Channel. Even our great battleships come in and 
out of Brest harbor, but mail steamers do not use it. Light- 
houses, submarine bells, railroad tracks, wharves and so 
on are wanting, and so is the decision to do what has been 



460 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

an urgent need for years. What are we waiting for? Do 
we intend to let the time slip by until commerce is tired of 
the delay and turns away from the natural route that we 
are too inert to open up? It is hard to believe that we 
were the people who cut through the Isthmus of Suez and 
conceived and began the Panama Canal. We are afflicted 
with a kind of loss of commercial will power. 

The Armed Peace System 

The fact is — and it must be reiterated, because it ex- 
plains a great many things — that France is living in a 
state of armed peace. ^ All the trouble comes from the 
Franco-German war, or rather from one of its consequences. 
France would have put up with a defeat for which her re- 
jected imperial government was more responsible than 
herself. She could have forgiven Germany for Sedan just 
as she forgave England for Waterloo ; but the root of the 
evil lies in a violation of justice, and is both a misfortune 
and a sign of progress. Assuming that France could 
turn a deaf ear to the complaints of Alsace and Lorraine, 
they would eventually obtain a hearing from the con- 
science of the world at large. Time cannot alter the fact 
that a violation of justice was committed. Germany will 
not give up her conquest, Bismarck himself was averse 
to it, but it has cost her too much bloodshed. On the 
other hand, the spirit of our times cannot sanction this 
conquest. ''In our day," wrote Benjamin Constant in 
1803, " every one would have been on the side of Carthage." 
The evil has been made irreparable, not by victory but by 
conquest. The Germans were not satisfied with being 
victorious. They have been ''blindly triumphant over 
their successes," as Franklin said, and, in so doing, they 
threaten every one. The conflict is between Germany 

1 Will armed peace last after the present war ? 



COMPETITION 461 

and France, but it is also between Germany and modern 
civilization. The problem has undergone a transformation 
concurrently with the progress of ideas. It has become a 
question of principle, and more a matter of morality than 
of politics. It is therefore, in a sense, less acute, but it is 
more serious and more impossible than ever to avoid. 
The spirit of conquest cannot be reconciled with the spirit 
of our time unless at least it can plead, as an excuse, that 
it has rendered a service to civilization or was consented 
to by the conquered people. It breeds nothing but the 
revolt and uncertainty from which every one is suffering. 
Under such circumstances as these, how can France or 
Germany, or the countries whose interests are bound up 
with theirs, be free to embark upon the immense and far- 
reaching undertakings in which the United States are in- 
tensely interested ? They are all crushed by the burden of 
debt from the wars of the past and expenditure on the wars 
of the future. Half their resources is wasted on fruitless 
antagonism. 

A Century of Peace 

Canada and the United States have benefited by a 
precisely opposite state of things, up to the present. Their 
economic conflicts, their race to spend the most money on 
railways and lakes, on apphances and their healthy and 
fruitful rivalry, are the result of a hundred years of un- 
broken and unarmed peace. In our European ignorance 
of things American, let us not assert that this peace was 
easy to establish and maintain ! Canada was the last 
colony left to the EngHsh in North America after the War 
of Independence and the War in 181 2, during which they 
burned the capitol at Washington. Canada might have 
been England's road to revenge. It might have been a 
constant temptation for the Americans, and a cause of 
continual quarrels for both. ^ There are very few inter- 



462 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

national situations in Europe more delicate than Canada's 
has remained for a century. It was far away from the 
defeated motherland, and bordered on the victorious 
United States. The truth of this is shown by the fact 
that the English took advantage of the decline of Napoleon's 
power to resume the offensive in 181 2, until, after having 
been again defeated and on the point of being driven into 
the sea at the battle of New Orleans, they signed the Treaty 
of Ghent, Dec. 24, 1814. It was ratified Feb. 17, 1815, 
and completed by an agreement dated April 28, 181 7. 

It was indeed an agreement! The two irreconcilable 
brothers decided to disarm, and they disarmed ! They 
have had plenty of opportunities to revoke their pledges. 
First there was the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, 
which was an indirect appeal to insurrection in the still 
unemancipated European colonies in the New World. 
Then came the encouragement given by the Holy Alliance, 
Metternich's appeals and the action taken by Emperor 
Alexander I against the ''Jacobin American republics.'' 
England might have thought it to her interest to take 
advantage of this action, instead of discouraging it and 
eventually making it abortive, owing to the powerful in- 
fluence exercised by her prime minister. Canning. Eng- 
land might also have profited by the War of Secession, 
the Alabama question and many others, but she had a 
clearer conception of her interest, which was identical 
with that of the Lancashire cotton spinners, and she did not 
give way to the temptation. This was greatly to her credit, 
and she not only acted wisely but set a great example. For 
one hundred years the two belligerents have observed the 
peace on which they agreed. It has been a complete, 
unreserved and absolute peace. The inland seas, for which 
they once contended and on which they fought naval 
battles commemorated in the Capitol Museum at Washing- 
ton, have become an arena for their economic conflicts 



COMPETITION 463 

without having ever again been plowed by the keel to a 
single man-of-war and without a single fort or gun to pro- 
tect a frontier three thousand miles long. A few redcoats 
and a few guns are kept at Quebec, as a matter of form, 
to show that Canada is loyal to the mother country. At 
Plattsburg, on the United States frontier, I also saw the 
American army, as I did at El Paso, on the Mexican fron- 
tier. The army, or rather the northern poHce force, 
amounted, if I am not mistaken, to 800 men, and it was 
quite a financial luxury, every soldier being paid as much 
as an officer. As a matter of fact, England and the United 
States are two great countries that have become reconciled 
to one another without armies. 

It is unnecessary to say that the beauty of this arrange- 
ment is not realized by all Americans, but those who do 
not perceive it are a miserable exception. The views of 
true Americans are interpreted by Senator Elihu Root, 
the great United States lawyer, formerly secretary of 
state and secretary of war, who submitted the following 
resolution to Congress at Washington (November, 191 2) 
in connection with the preparations for celebrating the 
centenary of this peace : 

"That on Feb. 17, 1915, one hundred years after the 
ratification of the treaty of peace, the British and United 
States Legislatures do suspend their labors for five min- 
utes, exactly at the same time, so that the whole of the 
Enghsh-speaking world may devote these five minutes 
to meditation over the benefits of a century of peace; 
and that a scientific committee be appointed to decide at 
what hour the above-mentioned period of five minutes 
should begin in the two assembHes."^ 

1 This festival did not take place. The war we in Europe hoped to 
avoid has spread over nearly the whole of Europe and Japan ; and there 
will be no adequate mention of this magnificent proof that peace can be 
maintained for a century between two great powers. 



464 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Thanks to this century of peace, the United States and 
Canada have been able to save countless millions of money 
and devote them to their respective creative and construc- 
tive enterprises. Canada has profited still more than the 
United States, for, although the latter have faithfully 
observed the treaty of 181 5 in regard to Canada, they have 
nevertheless spent money recklessly, as I propose to show 
later on, on their army, their navy and their pensions. To 
all these advantages, Canada has been able to add that of 
the smallest military burden, which has been practically 
nil up to the present. No more than her mines and her 
forest has she squandered her young men and her money. 
The natural result is that living is easier in Canada than in 
the United States, and that there is immigration into the 
new country from the one that is the more heavily taxed. 

Contagious Dreadnought Fever 

I am quite aware that the Canadians themselves are in 
danger of giving way to temptation and ordering dread- 
noughts (like every other nation, including the South 
Americans and even the Turks) either from British ship- 
builders or, if need be, from an industry of their own, 
which they would have to build up and of which they might 
not be able to rid themselves. They will, however, think 
twice before they commit themselves ; and if they succumb, 
which can still be doubted, they will confine themselves to 
a demonstration of loyalty towards Great Britain and to 
a more or less handsome monetary contribution, which is 
openly described, even in London, as throwing money into 
the sea. Further than this they will not go. Clever and 
far-reaching as are the propaganda adopted by the manu- 

In an article entitled " The Peace of Ghent and the War of 1914-1915 " 
published in the American "Review of Reviews" of January 15, 1915, I 
expressed my sense of disappointment at the failure to take any notice of 
the great anniversary on December 24, 1914. (March, 1915.) 



COMPEtlTION 465 

facturers of war material, and by the Hearst international 
news service and publications, they cannot be completely 
hidden, in new countries, under a mask of patriotism, but 
stand revealed for what they are — the demands of a new 
and insatiable industry that lives on the others and profits 
by protection carried to the furthest possible limit of excess. 
I cannot conceive the Manitoba farmers, and still less those 
in Saskatchewan and Alberta, who left the United States 
so as to escape from too heavy burdens : I cannot conceive 
the cosmopohtan crowd of immigrants from all sorts of 
countries, Irishmen, Scotsmen, French, Germans, Austri- 
ans, Scandinavians and even colonies of Russian Dukho- 
bors, dipping into their already scanty hoard, which 
they need for their plows and their schools, to pay for 
what are aheady called ''tin fleets," out of date even 
before they are finished. Neither can I conceive them as 
supplying these fleets with crews, of which England herself, 
and France still more, is beginning to run short. To ob- 
tain the required number of sailors and engineers, skilled 
men, who are already scarce, will have to be engaged at 
high wages. The result will be to deprive factories and 
farms of workers and increase wages in general, simply to 
form superfluous crews that will compete with indispensable 
colonists. The expenditure will be regarded as not only 
very heavy, but unjustifiable. There are to be three dread- 
noughts to begin with. This will be nothing at all in 
comparison with the American fleets, but it nevertheless 
involves a preliminary outlay of forty milHon dollars, to 
be provided by a people of scarcely eight milHon souls. 
This means five dollars per head of the population and, as 
the very poor do not pay taxes, a heavy burden will be 
laid on the manufacturing and business interests ; but this 
is only a beginning. These three battleships must be kept 
in commission, suppHed with coal, provisions, etc., repaired 
and replaced when obsolete. Docks must be built for them, 

2H 



466 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

and the subsidiary expense, which governments never 
mention but which are enormous, must be faced. Naval 
staffs will be needed and, consequently, a naval school, 
involving a naval caste and a naval spirit. And to what 
purpose? To make a show of resistance to the United 
States in case of emergency? Germany, according to the 
semi-official utterances, is the real enemy. Why not say 
Japan (in which case, when the three battleships for the 
Atlantic are finished, another three will be wanted for the 
Pacific) ? Admitting, for the sake of argument, that these 
weak reasons are sufficient, and that the future Canadian 
navy will simply be a loyal contribution towards the naval 
expenses of the mother country, the fact remains that this 
contribution will have to be paid, and that it may be 
considered too much for a colony of only recent growth. 
We must remember that, in the eighteenth century, the 
Americans rose in revolt rather than pay the taxes 
demanded by Great Britain. It is therefore probable, 
on all these grounds, that Canada will keep her expenditure 
on naval armaments within reasonable limits, and that 
the young British colony will thereby obtain one more 
advantage in its struggle with the United States. It is 
also possible that the latter will have to moderate their 
outlay, so as not to risk their already threatened supremacy. 
Canadian commerce, I am told, represents 90 per cent 
in value per head of the population, as against 30 per cent 
in the United States. The struggle is becoming a serious 
one. 

Whatever may be the outcome of this emulation between 
the two great neighboring countries in North America, one 
would think that this time, at any rate, we have found 
something that no other nation can pretend to rival. Such 
a conclusion would be mistaken, because it would be based 
on appearances. The rest of the world has its turn when 
the profits of progress are distributed. 



COMPETITION 467 

4. Universal Competition 

The United States are thus threatened with competition 
from the whole world, and this is what they ought to bear 
in mind. Canada is not the only privileged country. 
There are many others, either very powerful or very active, 
that must be taken into account. I forbear to cite China, 
whose resources and immense population I have been 
accused of using for scare purposes, although they ought 
to furnish reasons for a new European policy of agreement 
and cooperation. I will also say nothing about Japan, 
which has been militarized by Europe, is in danger of losing 
its good qualities for our bad ones and whose higher evolu- 
tion has thereby, I fear, been stopped. The Far East is 
not the whole world, but an unknown region that may be 
left out of consideration for the moment. Other countries 
supply us with quite as much material as we need. 

The West Indies 

The United States see and know nothing of any country 
but the United States. This is their strength and also 
their weakness. History and geography have many sur- 
prises in store for them. Competition is everywhere. 
Without going beyond the New World, let us take the 
case of Cuba. As we have seen, it needed only one good 
and able man. General Wood, to raise the educational 
standard of the people tenfold and show that the promise 
of this terrestrial paradise may come to full realization 
— a paradise possessing not only great fertility and an 
exceptional climate but a population characterized by in- 
telligence, gracefulness and courage. Private initiative, 
such as was exercised by Sir William van Home, was all 
that was required to multiply tenfold the value of Cuba's 
forests with their rare kinds of timber, its mines and its 



468 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

produce in general. But Cuba is only one island out of 
a very great number in the privileged region of the Antilles. 

South America 

What are we to say of South America and its great river, 
the Amazon, stjll in its commercial infancy, the Plata, 
Brazil, Chile, Peru and the Argentine Republic? What 
of the African continent, which was the world's granary 
and treasure house in ancient times? Why should not 
Egypt and the old Roman provinces, now known as Algeria, 
Morocco and Tunisia, and once more open to colonizing, 
begin again to export their prodigious harvests after cen- 
turies of rest? 

The African Continent 

Has the Nile ceased to fertilize its banks and its delta? 
Has it not great competitors of its own, the Congo, the 
Niger and the Zambesi, which have hardly been explored 
at all? What will Africa be like in another thirty years 
when it has plenty of machinery and navigable routes and 
can be crossed by railroad from Morocco to the Cape of 
Good Hope and from the Indian Ocean on the East to 
the Atlantic on the West ? 

Australia. Asia 

Do Australia, New Zealand, and the British, French and 
Dutch East Indies contain no natural resources? Are 
Asia Minor, Persia, Mesopotamia, Iran, the valley of the 
Indus, Asiatic Turkey and what was European Turkey and 
the cradle of our civilization, to remain nothing more than 
a vast cemetery ? Does Nature put on mourning for man's 
crimes? No; she appeals against their barbarity; she 
will revive, and is already reviving. 



COMPETITION 469 

American Ignorance of Russia 

All this will take a very long time, say the skeptics. These 
numerous sources of competition will certainly not come into 
full operation at the same time, but will grow in proportion 
to the requirements of consumers. This may be ; but, on 
the other hand, it did not take the United States very long, 
although they had limited means of action and were only 
on the threshhold of modern discoveries, to effect a revolu- 
tion in European industrial conditions by their competition. 
However, let us consider merely the situation as it is to-day 
and the competition that is likely to arise to-morrow. Is 
Russia's to be counted as nothing? The Americans either 
ignore the Russians or treat them as a negligible quantity, 
judging them by their form of government instead of their 
resources their superabundance of population and their 
genius. A young nation themselves, they do not give 
credit to Russia for youth. When Mr. Roosevelt went 
on his tour to the European capitals, he visited Budapest, 
as it was quite right to do, but he left Russia out. As 
I am constantly telling Americans, the Slavs and Russians 
must be reckoned with. You may well envy the extent 
and still undeveloped wealth of their territory, of their 
mineral deposits, of their petroleum wells and of their 
still intact forests, and the navigable nature of their great 
rivers, connected by canals, from the Baltic and the White 
Sea to the Black Sea, from the Dwina to the Dnieper and 
the Volga. You must also reckon with their population, 
of which you transplanted Europeans have no idea, because 
it is a race that really springs from the soil and is full of 
life and passion. Look at Russia's artists, thinkers and 
writers, and listen to her musicians. Observe what her 
explorers have done. What, in fact, have they not done? 
Tempered and hardened like steel by the cold, they have 
dared everything. The Arctic Ocean is their frontier and 



470 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

very nearly became the crown of their empire. Alaska 
once belonged to them, and their government was bold 
enough to want to appropriate the American coast of the 
Pacific and close it to the Americans by joining up with 
the Spanish possessions. All this occurred less than a 
hundred years ago. They gave way, but the scheme that 
was abandoned in America is being carried out in Asia. 
It would have been a magnificent accomplishment of 
human initiative had it not been clumsily spoiled by govern- 
mental weakness, war and revolution. Had Russia imi- 
tated the United States and Canada, and built railways 
and canals with only half the vast sums she wasted on her 
war with Japan, she would already be a formidable com- 
petitor in the world's markets; but her reserves are so 
great, and the needs of her constantly increasing population 
are so small, that she will soon have made up for her mis- 
takes. Russia is still Russia. She has vanquished cold. 
The mere fact that her capital is in the alleged uninhabi- 
table latitude of 60 degrees — ten degrees farther north 
than Winnipeg and Vancouver — is enough to show her 
contempt for obstacles which people have so long agreed 
to treat as insurmountable. What shall we say of Arch- 
angel, 750 miles farther north — a frozen port that 
provides England with a constant supply of butter, poul- 
try, fish, fruit and grain, in direct competition with Cana- 
dian produce? 

Another Canada in Europe and Asia 

These enterprises, which seemed mad enough as regards 
Europe, were only the beginning, and now we have another 
Canada, in Europe and Asia, preparing to take part in the 
race with the United States. We find Siberia, wretchedly 
supplied as it is with a single track trunk line (no better 
than a coach in comparison with the American transconti- 



COMPETITION 471 

nental lines) becoming populated, with magical and para- 
doxical rapidity, by a superior class of political exiles, 
opening itself to cultivation, waking up and taking part 
in the world's general life. Siberia has mighty and famous 
rivers, such as the Obi, the Yenisei and the Amur, which, 
like those in Canada, need nothing but men and capital to 
turn them to account. Siberia will have the men, and has 
them now, because the Russians, unlike the Americans, have 
hitherto proved themselves not only prolific but patient 
colonizers. They make themselves liked by the natives, 
whom they do not kill off or drive before them but asso- 
ciate with their work and treat in a brotherly spirit. In this 
way, Siberia is becoming a second Russian Empire still 
larger than the first. It is so young, alive and enterprising 
that the Russian prime minister, the ill-fated Mr. Stolypin, 
remarked to me at Petrograd in 1909: ''We shall soon 
be annexed by Siberia." 

This vision of the future presented itself to me at Mos- 
cow, the commercial capital of two continents, or worlds. 
We were at the railroad depot, waiting for the train to take 
us back to France. One might have thought Moscow 
large and important enough to be the terminus and start- 
ing point of the Russian railways for central Europe and 
France ; but the train we were waiting for, and which runs 
regularly and punctually in spite of the snow, came from 
Asia — from Krasnoiarsk, Irkutsk and Vladivostock. Mos- 
cow was merely a station on the line ! Thus is the earth 
girdled ; there is neither beginning nor end, but constant 
moving onward, continuation and resumption. Let the 
United States beware ! No one admires American activity 
more than myself, but I have seen a great many other 
active people besides the Americans throw themselves into 
the fight for the world's markets during the past twenty 
years. 



472 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Competition from Old Countries 

Even the old countries have been spurred into emulation 
and are learning from American innovations to take the 
good and leave the rest. I will go so far as to say that the 
progress achieved by the older European countries, and 
especially the great military powers, is all the more alarm- 
ing for the United States because it has been accomplished 
in spite of great difficulties and under the weight of burdens 
which I need not detail. The Americans do not in the 
least realize the advantage they possess, as producers, in 
having all their young men available as workers, while 
those in France and Germany, for instance, have to spend 
two or three years in barracks. What would it be if the 
United States had to compete with Europe on equal terms ? 

England is distended and bursting under the weight she 
has to carry, but nevertheless keeps going by her own 
momentum, and lives like a prodigal. Austria and Italy, 
those two supposed allies, are exhausting their resources 
on armaments that are really intended for use against each 
other, and yet they prosper, especially Italy, which, in 
spite of the worst kind of folly, uses her genius and industry 
to develop her agriculture and manufactures. Even Spain, 
badly off as she is, overrun with abuses and unable to shake 
off the domination of her monks, is managing to make her 
efforts towards an economic revival felt. Thanks to their 
knowledge, talent, ingenuity, art, taste and intelligence, 
France and Germany continue to sell : Germany her 
chemicals and cheap manufactured goods, and France her 
expensive articles. Never has the spirit of initiative shown 
itself more daring in France than during the past forty 
years, no matter where it was exerted — in the world at 
large, by exploration and colonizing ; in the mother country, 
through the automobile and motors for agriculture ; on sea 
and in the air, through submarine and aerial navigation. 



COMPETITION 473 

Great and Small Powers 

Let us turn from the great powers and consider the 
others, such as Hungary, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Poland, 
Switzerland, Roumania, Finland, Belgium, Holland and 
especially Norway. 

Scandinavia 

This last country struck me as the flower of snow-covered 
lands. Christiania is on the sixtieth parallel, as far north 
as Petrograd, and is in the south of Norway, which 
has been kept pure as snow, like Canada, by snow. Nor- 
way has very few inhabitants : a little over two millions ; 
the whole country thus having less than a single capital, 
Paris, considerably less than New York, and only half 
the population of London. Nevertheless, Norway has 
embarked upon several exemplary enterprises in connection 
with education, moral reformation, hygiene, benevolence, 
solidarity and also transports. The railroad from Chris- 
tiania to Bergen is a great feat, both materially and finan- 
cially. One wonders how so small a passenger and freight 
traffic can pay for such a costly undertaking. Moreover, 
these are fines that do not follow the great current from 
east to west, or vice versa, but lead straight to the north, 
as if they wanted to lose themselves. These lines, in con- 
junction with the rivers, canals and fiords, will create 
cold-cfimate industries, and tap power-producing water- 
falls and suppHes of timber and ore, just as in Canada. To 
quote a still more striking fact, the railway between 
Stockholm and Narvik, on which the Lapland express 
runs, is the most northerly on the globe, and reaches the 
68th degree. AH these lines relied on the great amount of 
emulation and public spirit possessed by the country, as 
well as on the same spirit of human energy that carried 
the dauntless Scandinavians and Northmen in their frail 



474 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

open barks to the western coasts of Europe and as far 
as America, long before Columbus's time. The same spirit 
has led such men as Nansen and Amundsen to the poles 
and Ibsen and Bjornson to the summit of independent 
thought. 

Nowhere has man seemed greater to me than in Norway, 
where he is so weak, so isolated, and, at the same time, so 
independent. The Americans have the blood of all these 
heroes in their veins, and they are proud of it. They are a 
mixture from all the most active countries on the globe, but 
let them beware of the still powerful and rival sources in 
old Europe. By Norwegians I mean the Scandinavian 
nations, which to my mind are inseparable and are now 
allies, in virtue of a fraternal treaty of neutrality. The 
United States owe much to the Swedish spirit of initiative 
and Swedish purity. The American champions, and 
especially the French, know how Sweden triumphed at 
the Olympic games and how overwhelmingly successful 
her riflemen and her athletes were; and we all know the 
high standing of her schools and colleges. Many universi- 
ties all over the world are modeled on those in Scandinavia. 
The atlas, issued by the Finnish Geographical Society, 
which lies before me, is a masterpiece in its way — a model 
that any one might be glad to copy and that would be a 
credit to France. I had much to say of Denmark at the 
time when I was endeavoring to stimulate our agricultural 
industries. This little country sets a valuable example, 
not only to the Old World, but to the New. Conquered, 
mutilated and ruined, not so much by German power as 
by the natural evolution of cultivation, it was obliged 
to give up its wheat fields, which were no longer worth 
tilling. It could see overwhelming competition coming 
from American and Russian wheat. Instead of sitting 
down to weep over its disasters and give way to discourage- 
ment, Denmark set to work to take its revenge and sue- 



COMPETITION 475 

ceed through its own energy, good organization, method 
and especially the practice of free cooperation. We now 
see Denmark with its wheat fields transformed into pasture 
lands and its cows producing quantities of thoroughly 
inspected pure butter, which competes with French butter 
in Paris and holds its own even more successfully against 
the Canadian article in London. Little Denmark has 
become the conqueror in an economic conflict — a real 
war, on the result of which depends a people's prosperity 
or ruin. Nowadays the prize is neither for the strongest 
nor the heaviest, and still less for the most brutal, but for 
the most active, the best educated, the most ingenious — 
the most capable, in fact, and the best fitted to succeed. 
Not only will the nations go on stimulating one another, but 
they are learning, mutually correcting their mistakes, out- 
stripping and fighting one another or associating their 
efforts. In short, they are all in a state of constant rivalry. 
The produce of the whole earth is thus put into circulation, 
offered to competition, and pushed for sale by improved 
newspaper and other advertising methods, as well as by 
the cinematograph and its appeals to the popular imagina- 
tion. This produce is bound to improve as time goes on ; 
and the worst producers will find themselves left out in 
the cold. Extending from field to field, city to city and 
nation to nation, this general emulation will develop 
steadily, and at the same time, it will raise the standard 
of comfort and make the consumer harder to please, so that 
real merit and quality will reap their reward. 

The progress now made in means of transportation 
already tends towards this end. What will it be when 
the barrier once formed by the Isthmus of Panama, which 
stood across the world's pathway Hke the Isthmus of 
Suez, has become a direct route between two oceans and 
two civilizations, the East and the West? The girdle of 
communication round about the globe will then be fastened, 



476 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

only two years hence. Then will the great currents, al- 
ready so numerous and rapid, combine to accelerate and 
regulate their speed and provide it at the lowest possible 
rates. Then will come the reward, not only for American 
boldness, but also for the disinterested and conscientious 
producer. Then will the struggle among all the workers 
of the earth really begin — a productive struggle which 
will call for the fullest possible employment of implements, 
resources and mental qualities. This conflict will mark the 
beginning of a new era, in which war, or the conquest of 
man, will no longer pay and will be discredited, not only as 
a bad action, but as bad business, a '* great illusion" and a 
great humbug. In that era the conquest of nature will be 
man's principal ambition. 

Americans, who have lived at peace, though in com- 
mercial rivalry, with their Canadian neighbors, for a 
hundred years, fully understand all this. Do they intend 
to reject the lesson of all this experience, repudiate their 
past, place themselves on the same footing as the heavily 
handicapped military nations, and begin a fruitless squan- 
dering of the men, money, time and resources they need to 
meet competition? This is the whole question. 

Between Two Fires 

Fifteen years ago, when I began to publish the investiga- 
tions of which the present work is only one of the conclu- 
sions, I endeavored to warn the divided Great Powers of 
Europe against the coming danger ^ constituted by Ameri- 
can competition with all the advantages it possessed against 
overworked Europe. Do Americans propose to give up 
their privilege, cease to be that danger and go over to the 

1 Le peril prochain; VEurope et ses rivaux. Revue des Deux Mondes, 
April I, 1896. Concurrence et chomage, nos rivaux, nos charges, notre routine. 
Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1897. 



COMPETITION 477 

other side, the one that runs the risk? They must take 
one course or the other; they must choose between the 
new policy, which has hitherto served them so well and 
made them a great people and a great source of hope, and 
the worn-out policies of Europe and the ruts on the path- 
way of armed peace. 

What will they do? Aggravate the evil in Europe by 
taking part in it, or save us by their example? Will they 
see where their real interest lies and do their duty, or will 
they miss their destiny? This is the problem that placed 
itself before me as I saw the United States more and more 
closely. The solution will bring the world either salvation 
or anarchy. 



CHAPTER XVI 

America's duty 

I. Pensions: the army and navy: 440 million dollars spent 
in pensions. The professional army. The mihtia. The navy. 
The United States protected by two oceans. A race to ruin, 
"Ships that are too big." Progress in submarines, mines and 
torpedoes. Expenditure. Dissatisfaction. Ports for all. The 
true American navy. The Naval School at Annapolis. The 
danger of an American navy and the policy of intervention. The 
lessons of the great war of 1914-1915. — 2. The Colonies : Im- 
perialism AND ITS Vicious Circle. The Pacific Ocean an Ameri- 
can lake or the Pacific islands neutralized. The Philippines. 
Machinery wanted. — 3. Panama: the Panama Canal Repudi- 
ated BY THE French Republic. Charles de Lesseps in prison. 
Resurrection. The forthcoming opening. A tribute to President 
Roosevelt and American energy. Fortifications. Enfeeblement 
through mihtarism. Possession or destruction of the canal. 
Preferential tolls. Treaty violation. Arbitration suggested and re- 
jected. The actual war : Neutrahty not indifference. — 4. Cus- 
toms Tariffs. Pessimism : Putting tariffs into operation worse 
than tariffs themselves. Inadequate justice. Administrative habits 
contrary to national idealism. Parliamentary control a farce. 
Elected representatives as slaves. " Pork-barrel " legislation. 
Organization of the Grand Army of the Republic. "Patriotic" 
military and naval leagues. Electoral reform. Newspapers. Cus- 
toms legislation. Public spirit will reform the administration. 
Reply to pessimists. New currents of foreign immigration in the 
United States. — 5. Conclusion : Distance between the United 
States and their Government. Americans are faithful to the 
Mount Vernon traditions, but the government has moved away 
from them. Birth of imperiahsm. The 191 2 elections. The rights 

478 



AMERICA S DUTY 479 

of man and the right of peoples. The renovation of Europe. 
Interest and duty of the United States. 

While so many rivals are coming forward in the Old 
World, and the New, what are you, the young democracy 
of the United States, doing to organize your forces for the 
struggle? Is it true that you have adopted some of our 
worst abuses and have even gone farther than ourselves 
in this respect? Is it true that I can no longer quote in- 
stances of your wisdom without being derided as a dreamer 
of dreams? Is it true that the noble ambition to reach a 
higher civilization is of less interest to your leaders than 
the race for naval and military supremacy? Let us see 
what the facts are. 



I. Pensions. The Army and Navy 

Your naval and military expenditure, including pensions, 
does not fall far short of half your Federal revenue. It 
absorbs more than two out of every five dollars. To men 
alleged to have fought in the wars that, according to your 
own admission, might have been averted, and to the sup- 
posed relatives of these men, you have paid, in fifty 
years, up to June 30, 191 1, $4,230,000,000, more than 
enough to provide your country, your agriculture, your 
education and public works departments with the best 
services in the world. Through the operation of well- 
understood phenomena, this burden, which ought to have 
melted away in course of time, is increasing. In 191 1 it 
exceeded $157,000,000. What would it be if the 
United States had known real war and mutual invasion as 
we know them in Europe? Let us, however, treat these 
sums as a prodigal son's expenditure or as debts of honor 
to be settled without investigation and let us see what you 
are now spending on your army. 



48o 



AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 



The Professional Army 

The American army is intended for various uses. It has 
its staffs, and its officers, trained at West Point. In the 
event of the country being attacked, the army would con- 
stitute the basis and framework of the national defense. 
In time of peace, its officers act as engineers, like those of 
our own engineer regiments, but, in reality, they are civil 
engineers and have done excellent work in the United 
States, Cuba, Panama and the colonies. The army is 
also a police force which the law empowers the President to 
use, up to its maximum strength of 100,000 men. This 
force is necessary, as we can see only too well on the Mexi- 
can frontier, to maintain order and protect the lives and 
property of American citizens. It was in little more than 
an embryo condition before the war with Spain. It had 
to be increased, or rather created, by the Act of February 
2, 1 901, to meet the needs of colonial expeditions. I 
append a table showing, in round figures, the strength of 
the active military forces of the United States on June 30, 
191 2. It shows an increase of 12,000 men as compared 
with 191 1, in which year the total was 74,000. 



Artillery . 

Cavalry 

Infantry 

Signaling Corps 

Engineers 

Coast Artillery 

Philippine Scouts 

Staff, Transport, Commissariat, etc. 



Regiments 



5 

15 
31 

I 
I 



Companies, 
Squadrons, 
Batteries 



60 

188 

4 

12 

170 

12 



Strength 



6,000 

15,000 

33,000 

1,000 

2,000 

19,000 

5,000 

5,000 

86,000 



America's duty 481 

The foregoing does not include 4000 men of the hospital 
corps, which is not considered in America as belonging to 
the effective strength of the army. 

These forces are scattered, or rather lost, all over the im- 
mense territory of the United States. A large proportion 
of the regiments are, or will be, in the Philippines, Guam, 
the Hawaiian islands, Panama, Porto Pico, Guantanamo, 
Alaska and China. The result is that the active army at 
home, where there are a hundred million inhabitants, amounts 
to about 40,000 men, divided into 49 garrisons of 700 men 
each, or concentrated on the Mexican frontier. In other 
words, the United States have no permanent army and they 
cannot have one, because there is no way of recruiting it. 
Besides, they have no need of it and do not care for it ; they 
want something quite different. The idleness of camp and 
especially of barrack life is repugnant to the American tem- 
perament. In the first part (p. 7) of his last annual report, 
dated Dec. 2, 191 2, the secretary for war, Mr. Henry L. 
Stimson, while doing full justice to the real services rendered 
by the army when it works, manages public undertakings 
and contributes to civilian progress — colonizing, sanitation 
and education, deplores the ravages caused by drink and 
venereal diseases in its ranks. These ravages are so great 
as to constitute a challenge to the entire effort of the United 
States towards sanitation. They exceed those of every 
other country and those due to all other forms of disease 
combined. The war estimates none the less come to 
about $115,000,000 a year,^ — an enormous sum for so 
small a number of soldiers. The amount is all the more 
enormous when it is remembered that the real outlay, 
which is sure to increase because it is beyond discussion, is 

1 The exact amount is somewhat diflScult to determine. The total mili- 
tary expenditure for 1913-14 is estimated in Mr. Stimson's report at 
$172,000,000, but $57,000,000 must be deducted for outlay by the engineer 
corps on civilian public works. 
21 



482 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

only partly included in the Federal estimates and has to be 
met out of the resources of the various states of the Union. 



The Militia 

The fact is that the real strength of the United States 
will lie, not in a professional army and its reserves in proc- 
ess of formation, but in the organization, which is still 
very far from complete, of the militia. Each state has to 
create its own, and each will try to produce the strongest 
and best trained. The strength of the militia now organized 
and put through training camps amounts to about 120,000 
young men, who remain under the control of the state 
governors, but, in time of war, would be incorporated in 
the regular army, it being expressly stipulated, however, 
that they shall not be called upon to serve beyond the 
frontiers of the United States. The Constitution leaves 
no doubt on this point. These mihtia already form a 
striking contrast to the regular army as described by the 
secretary. Here we shall undoubtedly have future results 
of the American spirit of emulation and also that of co- 
operation, which has already shown what it can do. Each 
local unit is designed to meet two ends. It fulfills its own 
special duty and is also prepared to contribute its com- 
pany, battery or squadron very much as it has its foot- 
ball or baseball team. These auxiliary forces, which are 
well officered, well armed and well trained, will soon be- 
come the country's real force — a national one, with a moral 
as well as a material value. It is the outcome of sensible 
foresight and will be a decidedly more serious proposition 
than a small number of mercenaries who propagate infec- 
tious diseases, as above mentioned, or a multitude of 
plucky but untrained volunteers. The United States were 
neither so rich nor so well organized a hundred years ago 
when they repulsed the EngHsh. 



America's duty 483 

Let us therefore treat the pension scandal as wastefulness 
which will disappear as the standard of public morals im- 
proves, and the war estimates as being principally an out- 
lay on poKce. These things are youthful extravagances 
and are still badly regulated, but the loss can be made good. 
Let any among the European states who has not sinned 
cast the first stone at the United States. The expenditure 
is already regarded as heavy, and an attempt is being made 
to limit it. Of this we find proof in the moderation of the 
United States government towards the anarchy which was 
making Mexico a prey to fire and sword. Mr. Taft's 
administration was sorely tempted, two years ago, to in- 
tervene in Mexico, but it resisted the temptation and dis- 
played truly exemplary patience. Public opinion was far 
from complaining, but, on the contrary, encouraged the 
government in its attitude, and congratulated it. A very 
large amount of American capital being invested in Mexico, 
it can readily be imagined that the government was 
strongly urged to take action ; but Mr. Taf t declined to 
make the Texas police force into an occupying corps, or to 
use the United States' small army, which is intended to 
protect the country, for purposes of invasion. He must 
have remembered the invasion of Spain, which might be 
described as a preliminary experiment made by Napoleon I 
for the edification of Americans. He also, no doubt, 
thought of Napoleon Ill's failure in Mexico. 

In any case, the United States have not committed any 
irretrievable mistake in regard to their mihtary forces. 
The paid army will not increase ; and there are several very 
good judges among our officers who see in the future or- 
ganization of the American militia — when supplemented by 
railways, roads, proper communications and due protection 
for coasts and harbors — a masterpiece of national defense 
by a free people. The United States army, Hke all the 
active forces of the country, is in course of formation. It 



484 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

is to be hoped that American opinion will not fall into the 
error of ceasing to interest itself in the question. The 
general staff, whose respected leader is General Wood, has 
just issued a complete scheme for the organization of the 
regular, reserve, militia and volunteer forces. This scheme 
applies, on the one hand, to the mother country, and, on 
the other, to the colonies and oversea possessions. It 
recommends the constitution of a partly governmental 
and partly Congressional council, to direct the national 
defenses and (to mention only the advantages of the pro- 
posal) to harmonize the usually rather conflicting ten- 
dencies of the army and navy department. Will Congress 
agree to hand over its responsibility to a technical com- 
mittee? This is doubtful, seeing that specialists are always 
consulted in the United States but seldom have a voice in 
management, in virtue of the familiar saying: '' Beware 
of the expert!" 

The Navy 

It can be clearly asserted that the danger for the United 
States does not lie in the army or in excessive expenditure, 
but rather in being carried away by the consequences of an 
organization which, copied from that of the divided states 
of old Europe, is in no way called for in the New World. 
The danger is in trying to outstrip other countries in naval 
power. I do not propose to repeat what I have so often 
said on this point ; but it is clear that unless there is some 
reasonable explanation of the incredible departure from 
good sense to which the military powers of the Old World 
have given way in building so many battleships (too big for 
their ports and also for their crews, which are becoming more 
and more difficult to obtain, while at the same time these 
vessels are defenseless against submarine explosions and are 
exposed to attack from aerial craft) it is still harder to under- 
stand why the United States should have caught the fever. 



America's duty 485 

Protected by Two Oceans 

The United States have two oceans to protect them 
against any attack and against all possibiHty of the landing 
of a hostile force, which is impracticable, even in Europe. 
De Tocqueville wrote long ago — and geography has not 
changed since his day — as follows: ''The great good for- 
tune of the United States is not that they have discovered 
a Federal constitution which allows them to carry on great 
wars, but that they are so situated as to have no reason to 
apprehend wars for themselves. . . . The new world is so 
well placed that man has still no enemy but himself in it." 
The United States are still better protected by their political 
federation than by their geographical position, and they 
have thus a duplicate and impregnable stronghold that no 
enemy from afar can affront. This is what George Wash- 
ington pointed out so forcibly in his noble Farewell Address 
to his countrymen on Sept. 19, 1796, before he carried 
out his purpose of retiring from power. For the benefit 
of future generations he set forth what means would have 
to be taken to safeguard his work — the establishment 
of American independence. These means were, to his 
mind, all summed up in one — the maintenance of the 
union among the states and its protection against all ad- 
versaries and especially against the adversary from within, 
who might try to undermine it, without openly attacking 
it, by constitutional but destructive changes. It must 
be defended, he held, as the palladium of national safety 
and prosperity. After pointing out the advantages of 
this union, he added : ''And, what is of inestimable value, 
union will spare you those quarrels and wars that prevail 
among neighboring and unfederated countries. You will 
thus escape the necessity of the constantly increasing mili- 
tary organizations which, under all systems of government, 
are hostile to hberty, and particularly to repubhcan liberty." 



486 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

A Race to Ruin 

Public opinion instinctively realizes that the United 
States enjoys both geographical and political security, and 
is far from urging the government from endangering this 
privileged position by dangerous precautions. For this 
reason the most genuine attempt made, while it was yet 
time, to arrive at an international understanding for limit- 
ing naval expenditure, came from the Washington cabinet. 
The Democrats, now in ofhce, will no doubt return vigor- 
ously to the charge, with the help of leading Republicans ^ ; 
but, in the meantime, the first attempt having failed, the 
Americans have now developed a keen interest in what they 
originally considered bad, and have embarked on the new 
course with all their usual ardor. They did not confine 
themselves to copying the English dreadnoughts and super- 
dreadnoughts, but set their hearts on something still bigger. 
Ten years ago we were told that the maximum tonnage of 
a battleship would be 14,500. They have doubled this 
figure, and are now resigning themselves to giving their two 
newest ships a displacement of 28,500 tons ; but, for battle- 
ships of the future, they are planning to go up to 35,000- and 
40,000- ton vessels, to cost twenty million dollars or more 

1 Secretary of the Navy Daniels, in his Annual Report for 19 13, said: 
"I venture to recommend that the war and navy officials and other repre- 
sentatives of all the nations be invited to hold a conference to discuss whether 
they cannot agree upon a plan for lessening the cost of preparation for war. 
It is recognized that the desired end of competitive building, carried on under 
whip and spur, could not be effective without agreement between great 
nations. It ought not to be diflScult to secure an agreement by which navies 
will be adequate without being overgrown and without imposing overheavy 
taxation upon the industry of a nation. I trust the tentative suggestion for 
a naval holiday by the strongest of the powers will be debated and the 
matter seriously considered by an international conference looking to re- 
duction of the ambitious and costly plans for navy increase. I trust that 
this country will take the initiative and that steps will be taken by a con- 
ference of all the powers to discuss reduction of the heavy cost of the Army 
and Navy." 



America's duty 487 

apiece. In vain do the most eminent naval constructors, 
headed by M. Bertin, the "father" of the Japanese fleet, 
raise their voices against the folly of building ships that are 
too large, pointing out that "a, few inches too much draught 
may prevent these ships from gaining shelter or entering a 
passage or dock for repairs near the seat of action" ; prov- 
ing that the most experienced commanders can neither 
maneuver them nor even save them in case of serious danger 
(for instance, that fine English battleship, the Victoria, sunk 
with all hands by her neighbor, the Camperdown, during 
squadron maneuvers in the Mediterranean), and without 
mentioning the too frequent catastrophes which, in time of 
peace and in the space of a few seconds, destroyed the Maine, 
the lena, the Liberie and many more ; and proving that 
absolutely nothing gives them any protection against tor- 
pedoes and submarine mines, the use of which in warfare 
has been greatly developed. 

Submarines, Mines and Torpedoes 

Of this there is an instance in the Russo-Japanese war 
itself, although at that time these developments still belonged 
to the future. The Petropavlovsk, with Admiral Makaroff 
on board, was sunk in harbor at Port Arthur, and I need 
only mention the Pobienda which was badly damaged, the 
Yashima and the Hatsuse. One could draw up a long list of 
armored vessels destroyed or disabled by explosions in time 
of war and of peace. In vain does Commander Murray 
Sueter write : " If a single torpedo or a single mine explodes 
only in proximity to a vessel, however heavily armored, that 
vessel will be disabled, ... of what use, in this event, 
can its guns and thick armor plating be ? The only effect 
of the extra weight will be to make the ship go down sooner." 
In vain is the knowledge that battleships in time of war will 
be reduced to playing the part of targets, and often rendered 



488 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

blind and helpless by darkness, fog and bad weather, now 
that ''the range of the torpedo is equaling or exceeding 
that of effective artillery lire." In vain does M. Bertin 
conclude his warnings by this picture: ''A squadron of 
twelve battleships in single file provides the torpedo with 
a target four miles long, in which the chances of making a 
hit or a miss are about equal." 

^^ Ships that are too big^' 

The Americans are carried away by a mistaken spirit of 
emulation and are making it a point of honor to build these 
moving four-mile targets, manned by ten thousand young 
fellows and costing two hundred million dollars. They 
are spending money freely on these targets. Their annual 
naval estimates exceed one hundred and fifty million dollars, 
the exact figure for 1913-1914 being $154,801,377. They re- 
main deaf even to the appeals made by their own admirals, 
who are alarmed by the insecurity of these battleships in 
peace as well as in war, and are still more alarmed by the 
responsibility of commanding such vessels — an undertak- 
ing that is beyond human powers and even beyond pos- 
sibility. Their late eminent adviser, Admiral Mahan, con- 
stantly uttered his warning cry : "Where is this to stop?" 
Even the Germans, realizing that a naval victory would do 
them no good and that the danger with which they are 
threatened is on their inland frontier, have at one time 
decided to limit their shipbuilding programs and concen- 
trate their efforts on the army, as I have in vain implored 
the French government and parliament to do. The 
United States have started off headlong and take no heed 
of these symptoms. They are still building and still spend- 
ing money ; but this expenditure and financial loss count 
for little, I repeat, in the grounds of apprehension I enter- 
tain for the future. What is really alarming is that they 



America's duty 489 

are being blindly carried away to take risks or possibly to 
meet disaster by this demoralizing race for supremacy. 



Expenditure. Dissatisfaction 

It certainly is demoralizing. Far from painting the 
picture in too dark colors, I am toning down the senti- 
ments of revolt and the charges that were spontaneously 
made, in my hearing, as I came into more and more direct 
contact with the people. I am not referring to the claims 
made by interested parties or to the oft-repeated assertions 
that the government was starving education to keep its 
dreadnoughts afloat, or to the contrasts drawn between its 
refusal to provide funds for roads, canals, forests, flood 
prevention, education, hygiene, etc., and its readiness to 
spend thousands of millions on an apparently powerful 
navy. I will merely cite one fact that occurs to me. 



Ports for All 

It was in New York on May 22, 191 1. Mr. Meyer, the 
secretary of the navy, and myself were guests of that 
influential body, the Economic Club, at its great annual 
dinner, attended by more than six hundred people. This 
dinner was a prelude to several speeches, including the 
secretary's and my own. I was greatly surprised to hear 
him reecho the criticisms I have everywhere heard directed 
against what M. Raymond Poincare once called leaks in 
the navy department — an expression which has unfor- 
tunately remained merely platonic. In his speech, which 
was fully reported next morning in all the newspapers, Mr. 
Meyer said, in substance : "I have pointed out that quite 
a number of our ports and arsenals are useless, but in vain. 
I have asked for the abolition of the navy yards at New 



490 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Orleans, Pensacola, Port Royal, New London, San Juan, 
Culebra, Cavite and others that are a drain upon our re- 
sources without being of any use for defensive purposes; 
but these yards are still in existence." All this is per- 
fectly well known in the United States, where four large 
ports — two on each ocean — would be sufficient to shelter 
all the American fleets : Narragansett and Norfolk on the 
Atlantic, Bremerton and Hunter Point on the Pacific. 
*' Local interests take no account of these facts, and fight 
to have their own yard or help their friends to have one. 
A navy is being built so as to have yards ! They are even 
being built in the colonies. The one at Cavite, in the 
Philippines, cost over ten million dollars and is useless, 
there being no bottom for anchorage." I did not fail to 
mention all these expressions of dissatisfaction in my speech, 
and never was I more heartily applauded. I asked whether 
the people of the Middle West would feel inclined to go on 
paying so heavily, only to be told afterwards that it was all 
for nothing, and to find it admitted that the money had been 
used either for building naval ports for cities that did not 
need them, or on the other hand, for pensions for widows 
or relatives of widows whose husbands were never either 
soldiers or sailors. 



Americans Great Navy 

The moral effect will have more effect than the monetary 
outlay on the opinion of Americans. They will be more or 
less ready to pay the bill, one hundred and fifty-four million 
dollars a year and more ! They will make up their minds 
to see many of the best class of their young men absorbed by 
the navy — 46,000, just as they have to do without the 
86,000 who enlist in the army, this making a total of 132,000 
men whose services are lost to the country. They will 
look less philosophically, and with a certain amount of 



America's duty 4qi 

uneasiness, on the creation, in the American democracy, 
of a new class — a naval and military caste, having its 
center of action in Washington and not at all inclined to 
let itself be deprived of its privileged position. They will 
say, and they are already saying: ''To what will all this 
lead?" There can be no mistake on this point. It is no 
question of ''flabbiness" or humanitarian objections, or 
even of the dislike of those interested in commerce and 
agriculture to sacrificing their future for the sake of pre- 
paring for an objectless war. It is, on the other hand, an 
essentially patriotic and posirive movement. Americans 
want a navy, just as they want an army, but it must be 
of the kind suitable to their requirements, and not a servile 
copy of European navies. They want submarines, mines 
and torpedoes to protect their coasts and, for deep water, 
ships that can go anywhere, instead of floating dungeons. 
They want a navy that serves a definite purpose, acquires 
and imparts knowledge, explores, polices the seas and acts 
as the advance guard of scientific and commercial progress. 
They want small and fast vessels to show the flag in all the 
worid's ports, but they make a disdncrion between these 
small vessels, which are signs of life and health, and showy 
squadrons of big ships that are costly and dangerous to 
send even on short cruises. They now have three fleets, 
the Atlantic, Pacific and Asiaric, without counting those 
that will be formed for the benefit of Central America. 
What need is there to send fleets on these voyages? A 
visit paid by one or two American warships to a foreign 
country is a friendly and polite act ; a demonstration made 
by a squadron is a kind of pretension, if not a more or less 
disguised threat. The one is the open, outstretched hand ; 
the other is the closed fist. An American admiral, if left 
by any chance to his own devices, might be sorely tempted 
to act. 



492 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Annapolis 

However good may be the class of men now in the Ameri- 
can navy, and however excellent may be the magnificent 
naval school at Annapolis/ the national temperament 
must be taken into account. That great admiral, John Paul 
Jones, soon after the War of Independence, when the main- 
tenance of peace was his first duty, did not hesitate to sail 
into the Mediterranean, go as far as Tripoli and give the 
signal for an attack on the barbarian corsairs who were 
more or less supported by the English against the French. 

The Navy and the Policy of Intervention 

This is not a romance, but a little-known chapter in the 
early history of the United States. That brave commander, 
Admiral Dewey, talked very haughtily to the captain of a 
German battleship on a certain occasion in the Spanish- 
American war; and what would have happened had the 
German officer replied in the same strain ? People are apt 
to forget that the tone of the American Press, only twelve 
or fifteen years ago, was very violent. It was aggressive 
towards every one, and especially France, which was ac- 
cused of favoring Spain and allowing American citizens 
to be insulted in the center of Paris ! To command an 
American squadron abroad, during a period of national 
excitement, would be a very trying experience for an 

^This naval college is magnificent, not only in regard to the monetary 
but to the personal effort involved in its maintenance. There are few 
enterprises that do Americans more honor, and give better proof of their 
determination in the face of the most adverse circumstances than the 
manner in which they have organized their youthful navy. Thanks to this 
effort, which is even more of the moral than the material order, the Ameri- 
can oflScers have succeeded in making a complete change in their crews 
which, instead of being made up of any kind of men who offered themselves 
at the ports used by the ships, are now carefully selected in the inland 
states. Twenty years ago, these crews were formed "anyhow" and included 
QO per cent of foreigners. This proportion is now entirely reversed and 



America's duty 



493 



American admiral, especially as he would most probably be 
unable to speak any foreign language, and be thrown upon 
his own resources, so that, however anxious he might be 
to do the right thing, he might act under misconceptions, 
which would be greatly increased by his ignorance of foreign 
customs and ideas. If he should begin to take an exalted 
view of his task and to give way to excitement, the honor 
of the flag and the national prestige would become involved. 
This danger is not imaginary. It exists in the case of a 
European admiral, whose training, based on centuries of 
experience, has impressed upon him the necessity of re- 
specting other people's feelings ; but it will be greater for an 
American sea dog, who may be an excellent admiral without 
knowing much about social and diplomatic usages. I 
constantly hear Americans complain very strongly — to 
my mind, too strongly, this being a youthful defect — of 
their countrymen's bad manners. It is one thing to talk 
about the bad manners of a young man who walks on ladies' 
dresses, for instance; but "bad manners" on the part of 
a battleship are a much more serious matter. To begin 
with, they are a business calamity, as was shown when 
Italian men-of-war fired blank shots at two of our mail 
steamers, the Carthage and the Manouha. We have not 
forgotten the search made on board these vessels, their 

shows from 95 to 97 per cent of Americans, the rest being made up, not of 
ordinary foreigners, who are no longer accepted at all, but of those who 
have already served and have signed again. Everything possible is 
done to make life pleasant and healthy for the men during their four years' 
service, to protect them from the contagious diseases with which the army 
is afflicted, and to stimulate rivalry between man and man and between 
ship and ship, not only in their training at sea and ashore, but in the sports 
organized for them. Their officers are accustomed to rely more on personal 
authority than on rank for the maintenance of disciphne. They take the 
utmost care to keep their men physically and morally healthy, and they are 
the first to profit by the education they are intrusted to impart. The 
progress made by the American navy deserves to be made known by some 
exhaustive work, which would confirm all that I have myself ascertained in 
regard to the resources of the United States. 



494 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

temporary confiscation, the irritation caused in France and 
the sensational parliamentary debates. Had M. Poincare's 
government shown less self-control, Italy would have had 
to fight not only Turkey, but one or more European powers 
as well. England gave a still more remarkable proof of 
moderation at the time of the Doggerbank affair. The 
blood that had been spilled cried out for vengeance ; the whole 
English nation was up in arms ; the British fleet was in good 
training, ready to act and sure of success. Only wisdom 
held it back. Can we feel quite sure that, under similar 
circumstances, American public opinion would have with- 
stood the temptation ? We know how completely it yielded 
in 1898 ! 

Americans have nothing to fear from their army, which 
is too widely scattered to be under the influence of any 
"savior of his country," but one cannot say as much of 
their navy, excellent as it is. Its fine qualities only increase 
the danger, because it is designed for naval engagements, 
because it is useless for purposes of defense and is meant 
for attack : to carry war into the enemy's country and not 
to repel it. The American navy is the inevitable outcome 
of the mistakes apprehended by Washington and of a policy 
which has gradually lost sight of its origin and has become a 
policy of intervention, diametrically opposed not only to the 
interests but to the traditions of the United States. A 
powerful American navy cannot remain in idleness. Con- 
tinual waiting for a war that always has to be avoided will 
end by making it lose all patience. It will not endure an 
unnatural state of existence which is more objectionable 
than anything to the American temperament. It cannot 
be placed on the same footing as the navy of an older 
country. What happens to the navies of younger coun- 
tries at critical times? Have we forgotten how some of 
the Russian warships, after Tsushima and Mukden, cruised 
about the Black Sea spreading terror far and wide, and the 



America's duty 495 

Brazilian battleships that fired their first shots against the 
forts at Rio de Janeiro ? All this is not the result of mere 
chance, but of paralyzing activity that is eager to expend it- 
self. I cannot be expected to admire the United States and 
believe in their future and, at the same time, to shut my 
eyes to what may be fatal mistakes on the part of their 
government. I cannot see how American dreadnoughts 
can serve the cause of progress, but I see only too well how 
much harm they can do, and the complications and dis- 
asters they can bring about, with the help of the yellow 
Press, against the will of the American people. 

The Lesson of the Present War 

March, 191 5. — It is impossible to avoid deriving new 
arguments from the present war. Admiral Sir Percy 
Scott's campaign in England against large navies no longer 
meets with any opposition worthy of the name. 

What has taken place during the first eight months of 
the war has a signification deserving of careful attention. 
Big battleships have been of no use, either to England, 
France or Germany, and still less to Russia. Not a single 
great naval battle that could demonstrate the usefulness 
of big navies has been fought. Only one superdread- 
nought has done anything — the British ship Queen 
Elizabeth, which bombarded the Dardanelles forts at 
long range, while the smaller battleships shelled them from 
a shorter distance. Will this operation prove sufficient 
to reestabfish the theory that great navies are necessary? 
I hardly think so. The jingo Press of all the leading nations 
has not failed to exaggerate and misrepresent what the big 
ships have done. The fact is that only the fast cruisers 
and submarines — small naval units, in fact — have proved 
their usefulness. Very fast German cruisers, such as the 
Emden, the Goeben and the Breslau, were able to defy the 



496 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

British and French squadrons. The Emden did not fall a 
prey to any big battleship. These vessels, with few ex- 
ceptions, remained in the neighborhood of England. As 
for the German battleships, they can hardly be said to 
have left port. When the Germans attempted to do some- 
thing definite in the North Sea, the result of the engage- 
ment and the sinking of the Blucher were due to the daring 
of the British sailors and the number of their scouts rather 
than to the size of their ships and the range of their guns. 
As a matter of fact, the British and German battleship fleets 
have simply counterbalanced each other and have therefore 
added nothing to the strength of their respective countries. 

If Germany, instead of spending so many thousands of 
milHons on dreadnoughts, had set some of this money 
aside for submarines and had possessed 400 of the latter 
(so as to have 100 always available) instead of 40, she 
would have had a complete mastery of the North Sea and 
the Channel. 

In the Mediterranean, the French fleet has been used to 
paralyze the Austrian, and here again the one simply coun- 
terbalanced the other. 

If Austria had had more submarines, the French super- 
dreadnoughts would have been useless. Even one Austrian 
submarine was sufficient to place our latest and most power- 
ful battleship, the Jean Bart, the flagship, out of action. 

It must not be inferred from these remarks that I regard 
the French navy as having proved useless. On the con- 
trary, it has not only neutrahzed the Austrian fleet but, in 
conjunction with the British and Japanese navies, it has 
helped to convoy our transports in the Mediterranean, 
on the west coast of Africa and in the Far East. In this 
way it certainly rendered valuable services, which were, 
however, due to the joint action of the alHed navies and 
their fast and medium cruisers, and not to the size of their 
big ships. 



AMERICA S DUTY 497 

If Germany and Austria, instead of wasting such vast 
sums on big battleships, had built more Emdens, Goebens 
and Breslaus, our transports would have been constantly 
in danger. The German navy did not save Kiao-chao, and 
the Russian navy was vanquished at Tsushima, showing 
that great navies are powerless to defend distant colonies. 

The operations in the Dardanelles, in my opinion, will 
do nothing to restore the reputation of battleships. No 
one ever suggested that a superdreadnought was worth 
nothing. The point is to know whether they are worth 
what they cost. The Dardanelles and the Bosporus 
have never been fortified like the coasts of a great civilized 
power. They are semi-barbarian coasts, despite the efforts 
put forward during the last few years by all the great metal 
industries to induce the Ottoman government to defend 
the straits with big modern guns and steel cupolas. There 
can be no comparison between the resistance of the Dar- 
danelles forts and those of a well-organized state. The 
situation would have been quite different if Turkey had 
been sufficiently intelligent to provide herself with sub- 
marines and complete modern defenses. They would have 
been impregnable had Turkey taken proper steps to protect 
them instead of buying out-of-date battleships from Ger- 
many and new ones from Brazil ; and Russia would not 
have been free to send her fleet to bombard the entrance to 
the Bosporus. 

The greater the number of unexpected proofs supplied 
by events, the more reason there is for the United States 
to draw the conclusion that a great navy can only be a cause 
of weakness and a danger for them. 

2. The Colonies. Imperialism and its Vicious Circle 

To these objections the admirals and generals reply 
that they have colonies to protect. Quite so; and here 

2K 



498 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

we are in the middle of the vicious circle of an embryo im- 
perialism. The need for a great navy to defend their new 
possessions began to be invoked by Americans from the 
time when they repudiated their own Monroe Doctrine 
and went outside their own continent to carry into other 
countries the policy of intervention they had shut out of 
their own. Having driven the Spaniards out of America, 
they established a footing for themselves in Asia, and, from 
the perpetration of this first mistake, date their assertions 
of the need for a more powerful navy to defend their new 
possessions. This pretext has now become valueless. 

Pacific Ocean an American Lake? 

No great power, not even England, can have enough fleets 
to go to the rescue of her colonies, dominate maritime 
commerce and secure the empire of every sea. I have 
often explained my views on this subject. Not by their 
fleets, but by peace can the United States or France keep 
their colonies. General Wood proved this in Cuba, al- 
though he nourished strange delusions as to the usefulness 
of battleships. The real conquest he made was that of the 
natives' confidence. He gained sway over minds and not 
bodies. This is the only form of conquest that does not 
bring reprisals in its train. Moreover, who would venture 
to attack Cuba, with or without the port of Guantanamo, 
after the risky experiment made by the United States 
against Spain, which was scarcely able to defend itself? 
What could any one do, in the military sense, with that 
island, which is magnificent but impenetrable for the 
Americans themselves and still more so for any more distant 
invader ? Why not defend Porto Rico, too ? Is there any 
fear for the safety of the Hawaiian islands? They are al- 
ready invaded by Japanese immigrants. This apple of 
discord cannot be removed by force, which would rather 



America's duty 499 

make it a source of danger. The naval and military 
station in Oahu, Pearl Harbor, now held by 4000 Amer- 
ican troops as a beginning, is a shelter for battleships and, 
in reality, the temptation for a great and unnecessary naval 
action. 

It is a pretext for neglecting the defense of the United 
States coast and leaving it to the fleet. Islands are a 
difficult question, in the Pacific as well as in the ^gean Sea. 
The Pacific is dotted all over with archipelagos, belonging 
to the Americans, Japanese, English, Germans, Dutch, 
French and Spaniards, which might be protected against 
the risk of attack. All these islands, from the Galapagos 
to New Guinea, from the Aleutians to the Carolines and 
Mariannes, ought to be made the subject of a general agree- 
ment, in which the United States should take the initiative, 
so as to provide against their being fortified or militarized. 
Wisdom lies in this and not in the senseless scheme of 
making the Pacific into another Mediterranean — "an 
American lake !" 

The Philippines. Machinery Wanted 

The Philippines are supplying the real pretext for de- 
veloping the American navy until Panama provides another. 
The effect was bound to follow the cause. The Americans 
took the Philippines, thousands of miles away from the 
Isthmus of Panama, because they had a few battleships, 
and now they are adding to their fleets so as to defend the 
Philippines. They have spread out into Asia although their 
own territories, from Florida to Alaska, are already too 
large and too thinly populated. They have made them- 
selves vulnerable although they had the almost unique 
privilege of invulnerability. They are making up for their 
mistake by the merits of their organization in the Philip- 
pines, Cuba and Porto Rico, and by contributing to civil- 



500 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

ization. Their officers and naval and military engineers 
have done remarkable work in the Philippines during the 
last ten years. There is progress in hygiene, native educa- 
tion, public works, agriculture and the moral and material 
uplifting of a country given over for centuries to unlimited 
oppression. Nothing has been neglected, and the country 
and its inhabitants are certainly gainers by the American 
protectorate. Theodore Marburg's theory as to the higher 
duty of interference on behalf of backward nations is plaus- 
ible enough, so long as it is not carried to excess and if we 
know how to manage it so that the intervention really bene- 
fits every one and not one state exclusively. In any case, 
the fait accompli ought not to carry Americans further on 
this course. It is clear that they cannot abandon the Philip- 
pines, after having assumed so heavy a burden with a light 
heart, without creating new and innumerable moral, polit- 
ical, economic and military responsibilities ; but the better 
I see the danger of this unlimited colonization, the more I 
hope, in the interest of the world at large, that the American 
government will manage to establish some system honor- 
able to itself and acceptable to all, whereby the Philippines 
will be enabled to continue their development with the 
benefit of neutrality. The necessary kind of machine 
remains to be found, but Americans have put many others 
together. If all the questions involved are thoroughly 
considered, and if officials worthy of such a mission are 
selected, neutrality can be organized in the Philippines so 
that order and progress will go on automatically to the 
honor of the United States and without making any direct 
call on their army and navy. For a young nation that 
cannot squander its strength, this is a vital question, and 
every day that elapses before it is settled is a source of 
danger. Americans recognize this, for other food for 
thought has been given them, and their attention is now 
absorbed by the Isthmus of Panama. 



America's duty 501 

Bravo! They are finishing what France began; they 
are taking up and completing, as in other instances, the 
work that was undertaken by her energetic pioneers and 
thrust aside by her incorrigibly feeble governments. 



3. Panama. French Repudiation 

What Louis XV and Napoleon I did in the New World 
was to abandon and sell Canada and Louisiana. Na- 
poleon III, on the other hand, tried to make Mexico submit 
to force of arms. The republic, though meaning well, did 
what was perhaps worse still. Under the pretext of pun- 
ishing certain guilty parties, who certainly deserved it, 
she withdrew, repudiated the Panama Canal, condemned 
its promoters and, in so doing, condemned herself. The 
most difficult part of the undertaking was done, the route 
was selected, the plans were drawn up and the worst part 
of the work was in progress. There was nothing more to do 
than to carry it on. Thousands of ardent lives had been 
sacrificed, and the canal may be said to be bordered by the 
graves of our men. 

Charles de Lesseps in Prison 

The man of genius, who ''separated continents but 
united nations," who enriched the whole world by 
cutting through the Isthmus of Suez, and who alone, 
after this first success, was able to conceive the Panama 
Canal, ended his life a broken man. He would have 
spent his last days in prison but for his heroic son, who 
went there in his place, after having taken the whole burden 
of injustice on his own shoulders. He died stabbed in the 
back, the victim of mistakes which it would be difficult 
to avoid in a colossal enterprise. It was thought better 
to treat these mistakes as a crime than to help him make 



502 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

up for them. Not the sHghtest trace of any guilty intention 
on his part was discovered in the sordid charges that were 
made against him and utihzed with ferocious joy by the 
republic's enemies. Loubet, Burdeau and other members 
of the government, who tried to defend him, were vilified 
and betrayed. A minister of justice, who was nothing 
more than a smooth-tongued and personally vain dema- 
gogue, saw an opportunity for personal aggrandizement 
in this shipwreck of a national enterprise. He took upon 
himself to act as public accuser and to let loose every kind 
of coward against the man whom people had become tired 
of calling the ''Great Frenchman." Ferdinand de Lesseps 
has joined those great servants and benefactors of human- 
ity who were so often our national victims. The men 
who were afraid of compromising themselves by supporting 
him were indeed successful. History will not even record 
their names, but will classify them all under one label — 
panic. 

Resurrection 

Fortunately, the work has outlived the man ; all honor 
to those who saved it. A few years hence, when the receipts 
from Panama Canal tolls are greater than those of the Suez 
Canal, when ships go straight from Brest to Shanghai, when 
the whole world's output is stimulated by the constant going 
and coming of the earth's merchant fleets, our children will 
learn what their fathers' weakness cost them. They will 
also be told about the great and perennial excuse — the 
antagonism between France and Germany. When Fer- 
dinand de Lesseps, in the interest of the Panama Canal, 
resumed the series of public lectures which had enabled him 
to carry out his former enterprise, he did not forget Ger- 
many. He was well received at Cologne, and he went to 
Berlin. Had cooperation between France and Germany 
been possible at that time, it would have carried all Europe 



America's duty 503 

with it and combined with America to the advantage of an 
undertaking of universal value. How simple it would have 
been ! Such an idea never occurs to us now, and yet it 
was a strongly patriotic Alsatian, Auguste Lalance, who 
wrote : ''If M. de Lesseps had found the financial support 
for which he hoped in Berlin, the Panama Canal would have 
been finished by French and German capital and engineers, 
in conjunction with those of other countries, and there 
would be no talk of American forts to be used to prevent 
ships from entering it." 

Had Ferdinand de Lesseps and his engineers been able 
to complete their work, America would have profited by 
it, as well as the rest of the world. France would have had 
no exclusive advantage from it, any more than she has had 
anything from Egypt, which, in a similar spirit of timidity, 
she gave up to England in 1882. Here we have another 
instance of what harm is done to the world when France 
fails in her duty. 

The harm might have been greater. The panic in France 
was so severe that the Panama Canal ran the risk of being 
disqualified in the future and even in the past, and judged 
unworthy not merely of being finished but of ever having 
been begun. Sentence would then have been pronounced 
against not only the work itself but against its French con- 
ception; that is to say, against French genius. There 
was some ground for this mistaken view when the still-born 
scheme for the Nicaragua Canal was brought forward, but 
it failed, thanks to our energetic compatriot, M. Bunau- 
Varilla, to whom it may be said that the Panama Canal 
owes its resurrection.^ 

1 "Panama: La creation, la destruction, la resurrection." By Philippe 
Bunau-Varilla, formerly of the Public Works Department (France), chief 
engineer of the Panama Canal and minister plenipotentiary of the Repub- 
lic of Panama at Washington in 1903 and 1904. I vol. 8vo. Plon, Paris, 

1913- 



504 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

President Roosevelt. American Energy 

This much being said, we must add, to the credit of the 
Americans, that President Roosevelt's administration 
took up the abandoned work and was followed by Mr. 
Taft in carrying it on to a successful conclusion with 
exceptional vigor and courage. Next year, if no unfore- 
seen circumstances occur, vessels, whether of war or peace, 
will make their way, for the first time, from one ocean to 
the other. In this case also, Americans have been helped 
by their national youth, by the progress of mechanics and 
hygiene, by their untiring discipline, their spirit of organiza- 
tion and their men, foremost of whom must be named the 
chief engineer of the canal, Colonel Goethals. They have 
deserved well of humanity. The Panama Canal will be 
a triumph of French initiative and American organization. 
History, after being momentarily led astray, will not be 
diverted from this conclusion. The Americans utilized 
our first excavations and our machinery, which is still in 
good condition, and our plans, but they have of course 
modernized and modified their own plan of action year by 
year. Their locks are immense, and all their gigantic 
machinery, designed to raise the largest vessels like mere 
scows, is on the same scale. Perhaps they have even 
done things too hugely. The assistance of French engi- 
neers, with all their experience and conscientiousness, would 
not have been an unnecessary precaution against the great 
risks, both natural and accidental, that will threaten the 
canal, in the guise of landslips and earthquakes, until it 
settles down into its final and expected form, that of a 
strait. The Americans have done wonders in the organiza- 
tion of the auxiliary services, especially those connected 
with hygiene, which have given excellent results. They 
have made the most unsanitary districts healthy ; the 
terrible Chagres fever has died out. We are a long way 



America's duty 505 

from the time when it was said that every railroad sleeper 
marked a Chinese coolie's grave. The Americans have 
built sewers, made cleanliness obligatory everywhere and 
sobriety wherever possible. They have reduced the num- 
ber of saloons and exercised strict control over the sale of 
liquor. Acting on Laveran's discovery of the malarial 
fever microbe and on the facts ascertained by a Cuban 
doctor, Carlos Finley, who was strongly backed by General 
Wood and Major Gorgas, they have made war on the ''steg- 
omyia," or mosquito that conveys the germ of yellow 
fever. They have drained the ponds and stagnant waters 
and burned the bushes in which this death-deaHng insect 
bred. They have provided workmen's houses, clubs, 
camps, hospitals and hotels, and have taken such definite 
and properly observed precautions that the death rate is 
now lower than in many very healthy parts of the United 
States. They have tapped springs, obtained supplies of 
good drinking water, and built schools for the children of 
their workmen, who, being no longer afraid to come, are 
bringing up their families on the spot. At little expense 
they have organized a special police force, composed of 
whites and colored men. They pay good wages. They 
selected the teaching staff for their schools with due re- 
gard to all susceptibilities, and have white, Spanish and 
negro teachers, both men and women. A working popu- 
lation of 6000 whites and 19,000 colored people is thus 
enabled to live, on the whole, very peaceably, and to work 
under good conditions of health. The enterprise which 
we despaired of seeing completed has succeeded, thanks 
to scrupulous attention to an infinitude of details, careful- 
ness and tenacity, and by the Americans' disregard of the 
criticisms or calumnies which have been, and will be, 
showered on them. Finally, from the financial point of 
view, they have come to realize all that the enterprise 
means in the future ; they had faith, and they have kept it. 



5o6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Fortifications 

But the more I appreciate, in this instance as in others, 
American merits, the less I understand why a great navy 
is indispensable for the protection of the canal. They 
have already, to my mind, made a mistake in fortifying 
it. 

And yet the example of the Suez Canal was eloquent 
enough. 

Monarchical Europe as it was in 1869, France, Russia, 
Austria, England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Greece, 
etc., managed to agree that there should be no fortifications 
around the Suez Canal, although it is where wars famous 
in history have been waged ; where Asiatic, European and 
African civilizations once came into conflict, and where, 
at the end of the Mediterranean lake, the center of antici- 
pated future hostilities will be located. All these nations, 
in a state of age-long rivalry which was still acute, were able 
to agree on the necessity of respecting the canal ; and this 
arrangement has satisfied the world^s trade so thoroughly 
as to withstand the severest tests since 1869. Noth- 
ing has endangered the canal's neutrality — neither the 
Franco-German war, nor the British occupation of Egypt 
and the Soudan, nor the Russo-Turkish war, nor the Graeco- 
Turkish war, nor the Turkish-Italian war nor the war in 
the Balkans.^ This neutrality has emerged intact from all 
the conflicts which looked as if they must render it im- 
possible. It seems to be intangible, because it is in the 
general interest. And we are to suppose that the republic 
of the United States, which has had no experience of the 
chronic rivalry between neighboring states in old Europe, 
which has had no obstacle to surmount except an almost 
defenseless Colombia and negotiations with the weak states 

^ Nor the war in 1914-1915, despite the violation of every rule of inter- 
national justice by Germany and her allies. (March, 1915.) 



America's duty 507 

of Central America, which had all the maritime powers in 
the world on its side, will fail to profit by such an example 
and will decide to retrograde ! It has fortified the Panama 
Canal! Against whom? Against revolution, anarchy or 
the possible coalition of a few South American republics? 
To give due protection to the docks, machinery and free- 
dom of navigation? A well-organized police force, sup- 
ported by all the forces in the world, would have been more 
than enough. Against Japan? How, let me ask for the 
hundredth time, could Japan strike at such a distance, 
especially as an attack on Panama would be like an attack 
on the world at large ? 

Enfeehlement through Militarism 

The fortification of the Panama Canal is unjustifiable 
in equity and principle, and useless in fact. It is another 
sign of the growth of American imperialism. It is the out- 
come of the bad influences brought to bear on official 
circles in Washington ; it is a mihtary act without a motive. 
It is a seizure of what ought to be common property and 
an outrage on the world's confidence. It was also, I repeat, 
a clumsy and unnecessary act. The arguments put forward 
by the American administration to justify itself can be 
turned against it. The war minister sums them up in his 
above-mentioned report (p. 12) with surprising frankness: 
"We must open the canal to American fleets and close it 
against our enemies." It should be noted that the forts 
themselves will have to be defended by 25,000 troops. 
These must be supported by a fleet, which, in turn, will 
need a base in the shape of the works it is proposed to 
carry out at Guantanamo, not to mention the Pacific. 
What a very promising prospect! Something might be 
said for this endless expenditure if it contained any cer- 
tainty of safety, but the reality is quite different, as is 



5o8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

shown by the advocates of fortification themselves in their 
agitation for armaments. Major General G. W. Davis, 
in the ''American Journal of International Law" (October, 
1909), said that if the canal were monopolized by the United 
States, it would cease to be protected by the general in- 
terest; it would become a reserved passage, in reality a 
weapon in the hands of the United States and an obstacle 
and a menace for all other countries. Under these cir- 
cumstances, it would be to the interest of the other coun- 
tries to destroy the canal. The main object of the war 
would be, for the one side, to retain possession of the 
canal and, for the other, to close it ; and this alone would 
be enough in itself to give rise to a war of which no one 
would have thought previously. 

The United States will concentrate their efforts on closing 
the canal under their guard, and it will have to be closed 
very thoroughly, because its destruction will be the object 
and the essential feature of the war and the incentive to 
the most daring and heroic enterprises by the handful of 
determined patriots who will be tempted to follow the 
example of Captain Hobson.^ How can there be any 
certainty that some vessel, flying a neutral flag, has not 
been bought by a belligerent and does not carry enough 
explosives in its cargo to blow up a lock? If such an 
attempt succeeded, the vital communication on which 

1 Captain Richmond P. Hobson is the justly celebrated American hero 
who bottled up the Spanish fleet in Havana harbor by sinking the Merrimac, 
of which he was given the command, at the entrance to the channel. A 
briUiant student of the Annapolis Naval College, and afterwards an officer 
in the engineering branch of the navy, he is now Democratic congressman for 
the state of Alabama. In Congress he advocates the greater navy cause 
with all the warmth of a Christian Scientist. The hero has become an 
apostle. He has devoted his life to denouncing the Japanese peril and 
asking for dreadnoughts. His are the ideas I have controverted in Chapter 
VI, "The Inevitable War," and I had him especially in mind when I re- 
marked that there are Democrats who want an increased naval outlay, and 
Republicans, like Burton, who oppose it. 



America's duty 509 

the United States relied would be cut off, their operations 
would be suspended, their plans upset and their public 
opinion demoralized. 

What a splendid result this would be ! Let us, however, 
consider the situation only in time of peace. The Ameri- 
cans might have confined themselves to carrying out a 
useful and magnificent work in Panama and the Philip- 
pines. They went beyond the scope of their mission. In 
Panama they assumed responsibilities that are without 
limit and are full of danger for all. They have assumed 
responsibility for a route on which every accident of man- 
agement will inevitably be exaggerated through the mere 
fact of their predominance and will become a political 
matter. How injurious this will be to civilization and the 
higher interest of the United States ! What a piece of 
bravado and what a seeking after unpopularity ! Imagine 
the ships of all nations, after using the Suez Canal freely 
for forty years, going through the Panama Canal under 
the guns of American forts ! What an unpleasant differ- 
ence, and what an effect will be created on the public 
mind ! It is by pretensions of this kind, and by the use 
of Might in defiance of Right, that Germany has done 
herself so much harm in the world's estimation, and now 
we have the American democracy falling into the imperial 
error even before it possesses the army and navy necessary 
to support such an attitude. 

The precautions alleged to be in the interest of American 
trade can only do it harm. The Panama Canal ought to 
be an instance of progress as compared with the Suez 
Canal. Instead of being in the hands of a single power or, 
in other words, in the hands of a single government, which 
may mean some day, perhaps, a single clique, it ought to 
be under the protection of the whole world. 

An unfortified Panama Canal would have been even 
more neutral than the Suez Canal. It would have been 



5IO AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

less exposed to attack and, consequently better defended by 
the general interest.^ 

Preferential Tolls 

We must resign ourselves to this belittling of a great 
work and put up with these fortifications, which are more 
humiliating for those who force them on the world than 
for those who accept the situation ; but let us follow up 
the consequences of Americans mistake. Under pretense 
of protecting a neutrality which had nothing to fear from 
any one, the United States will have to burden themselves 
with garrisons, with fleets that will attract other fleets, 
and so on. But this is not all. There is a big bill to be 
paid; and, to provide the immense sums that all these 
precautions will cost the United States, it has been found 
necessary to make further inroads upon universal rights,^ 
and, under color of giving advantages to a few non-existent 
shipping companies, to prepare to make all foreign vessels 
pay preferential tolls, which would be prohibitive for some 
and would be to the sole advantage of the United States. 
This amounts to a boycott of international commerce in 
the canal. Tolls and big guns ! What a welcome for the 
world's shipping in this supposedly universal waterway! 
If it be asked whether there was anything in the treaty 
obligations or statements of the United States government 
to justify such a boycott, the answer is "No." In his 
manifesto, which is quite a political testament, John Hay 
says: ''The canal must be open to every nation in the 
world on the same terms. ''^ His successor, Elihu Root, has 
frequently and still more emphatically confirmed these 

^ The objection may be made that the general interest no longer exists ; 
but, as will be seen further on, if we are henceforward to reason in accord- 
ance with the experience of the present war and on the hypothesis that in 
future there will be neither treaties nor contracts nor justice, it will be a 
mere waste of time to provide for what may happen, or even to think, and 
all we have to do is to make a deliberate return to a state of savagery. 

^ Since repealed. 



America's duty 511 

words, which are merely a reminder of the express stipu- 
lations contained in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty: ''The 
canal shall be free and open to merchant ships and warships 
of all nationalities, subject to compliance with the regula- 
tions. Absolute equality shall be observed in the tolls 
levied on all these vessels, and no distinction shall be made 
which maybe unfavorable to any nationality or its nationals, 
either as regards traffic regulations: or tolls levied in any 
other way." 

Treaty Violation 

The repudiation of such engagements, which are still 
quite recent, and the violation of such definite treaty 
obligations, constitute a very unpleasant symptom. The 
proposed violation has aroused a chorus of protest from 
every government and country in the world and, for- 
tunately, has been loudly and, at last, successfully, reechoed 
in the United States. It was first made by England, the 
signatory of the violated treaty and the nation chiefly af- 
fected by the intended boycott. EngHsh shipping, if it were 
compelled to pay preferential tolls, would lose all the ad- 
vantage of the canal and be obliged to go on using the Suez 
Canal, so that the Americans would find themselves unin- 
tentionally helping their competitor. The Panama Bill 
would have done more harm to British merchants than tc 
their German competitors, because it would close the whole 
of the American Pacific coast to their imports. The Cana- 
dians, whose transcontinental railroad traffic is already 
threatened, would be still harder hit. A vessel bound from 
Halifax to San Francisco would pay very heavy tolls, which 
may be estimated at a minimum, on an average, of a dollar 
a ton of cargo. A cargo boat carrying 20,000 tons of coal 
or wheat would pay twenty thousand dollars each voyage, 
from which tolls American vessels following the same course 
but starting from Boston or New York would be exempted. 



512 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Worse still, a vessel bound from the Gulf of Mexico, from 
Vera Cruz or Tampico, to Acapulco or any other port in 
western Mexico would have to pay tolls, as would a boat 
plying from Colombia and back, and so on. The Panama 
Canal would seem as if it were intended solely to favor 
American shipping to the detriment of that of the entire 
earth. It has been calculated that it would be to the ad- 
vantage of Canadian vessels bound for California or Chili 
to take the Suez Canal route. 

American opposition to this scheme has been voiced by 
what is best in the country's political and intellectual life. 
^'The national honor is at stake. Are we, or are we not, 
to break our plighted word, endanger our credit, and even 
our reputation and incur the odium of the entire world? 
Are we to adopt the saying : ' I promised, but I will not 
keep my promise'? The loss of general confidence is a 
serious question for a country. It amounts to commercial 
suicide. Have Americans calculated what it costs to appear 
in the world's markets with a doubtful reputation ? Has it 
occurred to them that in this way they will lose their best 
customers and best outlets ? Abandoning one's reputation 
and trademark in international life is like killing the goose 
with the golden eggs." This is a summary of the argu- 
ments put forward, and they have finally borne fruit. 

Arbitration Suggested and Rejected 

At first, Mr. Taft's administration, although it had asked 
England and France to agree to treaties for obligatory and 
unlimited arbitration, did not hesitate to contradict it- 
self, and even to violate a treaty previously signed on 
June 5, 1908, by going so far as to refuse to submit the 
question to arbitration ! President Roosevelt himself ex- 
pressly blamed this refusal, and wrote (Jan. 7, 19 13) : *' We 
ought to leave it to the Hague Tribunal." Here is what 



America's duty 513 

was said, in the same spirit, by Elihu Root in Congress at 
Washington on January 21, 1913 : ''After having tried to 
make others accept arbitration, we should be guilty of re- 
volting hypocrisy if we refused to agree to it ourselves. 
How could we respect ourselves or expect others to respect 
us? Are we to let it be supposed that our country, our 
Congress and our President have been fooling the world 
and simply talking to the gallery, for the sake of applause ? 
It is a line thing to belong to a great country, but size 
alone does not make greatness/' 

Since it became the absolute master of the future channel 
of communication between two hemispheres, the govern- 
ment of the United States has thus, in the space of a few 
years, been led on to violate one obhgation after another, 
from taking possession of a territorial zone (in itself an act 
open to criticism) to fortifying the canal ; from building 
forts to levying preferential tolls, and from preferential 
tolls to a refusal of arbitration. 

4. Customs Tariffs. Pessimism. Conclusion. Inadequate 

Justice 

Is this all, and can we close the list of American mistakes 
at this point? No; man is infinitely prone to error, no 
matter on what side of the ocean he Hves ; but I have not 
yet dealt with the tariffs. They have made themselves so 
familiar that it is hardly necessary for me to discuss them. 
They are one of the sources of revenue out of which the 
extravagant Federal outlay is met. Unfortunately these 
tariffs, in addition to being exorbitantly high, protect a 
few privileged industries, which generally work together, 
to the detriment of the great mass of consumers and pro- 
ducers. On the ground that sheep-breeding, which is 
none the less dwindling away steadily, must be protected, 
Americans are prevented from manufacturing and wearing 



2L 



514 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

woolen materials ; cotton enjoys an overwhelming monop' 
oly, and so on. Several industries are killed for the 
benefit of a single one. Living is made expensive. Initia- 
tive is put to sleep in some cases and paralyzed in others. 
There was some reason for the establishment of these 
tariffs in a new country desirous of building up its own 
industries, but protection finally degenerates into oppres- 
sion. The tariffs themselves are only a part of the trouble. 
What is particularly objectionable is the manner in which 
they are put into operation. There are unjust and arbi- 
trary proceedings on the part of the customs officials that 
do still more harm to the friendship than to the commercial 
relations between two countries; there is a system of in- 
quisition, lawlessness, insecurity, unpunished and en- 
couraged imitation, constant infringements on trade- 
marks — a system under which the trusts are sure to 
crush all competition, and silence all complaints, and 
abuses of every kind prevail. There must, however, be 
an end to everything, and the time is coming when the 
Americans themselves will perceive that these abuses do 
more harm to themselves than to their customers. They 
are becoming sellers and are exporting their manufactures ; 
and they are beginning to find out that while they have 
been able to do as they pleased in their own home markets, 
thanks to the absence of competition, they cannot act in 
the same way in foreign markets. They are coming into 
business relations with the world. This is progress, and 
it will compel them to adopt other forms of progress. 

It might be better if the victims of United States pro- 
tective tariffs could make their complaints heard, but 
foreigners encounter too many difficulties and incur too 
much expense and risk. As for the Americans, we know 
how President Roosevelt encouraged judicial independence 
by bringing forward his famous "Recall,'' intended to 
enable the people itself to quash judgments and, better 



AMERICA'S DUTY 515 

still, to dismiss judges whose findings might happen to 
annoy the majority for the time being. What kind of 
principles are these, and by what a great gulf are they 
divided from the generous idealistic movement, which is 
showing its signs of life, as we have seen, all over the 
country ! 

" Pork Barrel " Legislation 

After this we can hardly be surprised at the farcical na- 
ture of parliamentary control and the subserviency of the 
people^s elected representatives to cleverly organized 
cliques. A congressman elected for two years, or even a 
senator elected for six, would have to be simply heroic to 
hold out against the systematic pillaging of the Federal 
funds when he sees that the government itself, while con- 
stantly talking about economy, either puts up with this 
pillaging or encourages it ; when an influential member of 
Congress felt justified in stating that three hundred million 
dollars a year could be saved if the administration of the 
United States were conducted on business lines; when 
every state, district and city goes in for *'pork barrel" 
legislation,^ and demands a slice of the cake in the form 
of public works that are not needed and buildings that 
have only an electoral utility ; when, finally, we see, oper- 
ating with impressive regularity, all over the country, that 
extraordinary body whose effects I have described, the 

1 By "pork barrel" legislation is meant the voting of Federal funds for 
personal and political motives and not for the public good. It means " Every- 
one for himself." To get what he wants, a member undertakes to vote 
for what the others want. It is equivalent to the principle expressed by 
"Scratch my back and I will scratch yours," and is well known in other 
parliaments besides the American. 

This system has led to an immeasurable increase in "pork barrel " legisla- 
tion and to an increase in expenditure to the extent of 243 per cent, while 
the increase of the population has reached only 118 per cent. 

The appropriations for the two financial years 1877 and 1878 were 
still only $596,000,000, while those for 1911-1912 came to $2,055,000,000 or 
more than a thousand million dollars a year. 



5l6 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Grand Army of the Republic, — an organization in which 
an inner circle, under the cloak of patriotism, aims at noth- 
ing but an increase in the notorious military pension list and 
can plead that it is only a copy of similar scandals in 
Europe, such as the leagues, also styled ''patriotic," that act 
as connecting links between the Press, the government de- 
partments and the military purveyors of the German 
government itself! It has been calculated that, under 
this system, there has been no increase, but rather a de- 
crease, in the amount of imported foreign produce per 
capita during the past century, while the cost of govern- 
ment, which ought to become proportionately smaller as 
the number of inhabitants increases, as should be the case 
with every large private concern, is now, on the contrary, 
three times as large per head of population. The rule is 
thus reversed. My experience as a Frenchman unfortu- 
nately leads me to note these facts with little surprise. In 
my country the blame is laid at the door of members of 
Parliament, and an electoral reform scheme, which is 
supposed to be a panacea but would in reality only make 
things worse, has been proposed. The newspapers are 
also accused, but they merely reflect the views of their 
readers, the private interests back of them, and the gov- 
ernment that utilizes them. Where a change is needed is 
in morals generally, and this is beginning to be understood. 

Public Spirit Will Reform the Administration 

In this sense, it is possible to say that there is something 
new in the United States. It is not the national govern- 
ment but the national spirit — the public spirit which, 
as we have seen, is becoming educated. The rest will 
follow. 

In the meantime, the pessimists find it the simplest 
plan to despair of the future. Their latest argument is 



America's duty 517 

not without interest ; they have made up their minds that 
the United States are aheady degenerating, and in this way : 



New Immigration 

The population of the United States has undergone a 
change during the past twenty-five, or even ten, years. 
The northern parts of Europe either keep their own in- 
habitants or send them out to the colonies or new countries, 
so that the source of emigration from Europe to America now 
is verging towards what the English contemptuously call ^' the 
East-end of Europe/' The Irish element, for instance, sup- 
pHes less than it did. If we consult only the statistics of the 
city of New York, which has an enormous number of foreign- 
born inhabitants (almost as numerous as Americans) and to 
which there is a constant influx of Italians, Greeks, Arme- 
nians, Israelites, Slavs, Levantines and natives of European 
and Asiatic Turkey, we find that the total of German 
''foreign-born" has declined from 324,224 in 1900 to 278,137 
in 1 910. On the other hand, the Italians have increased 
from 145,433 to 340,770; the "foreign-born" put down 
under the head of ''Austrians" have grown from 90,477 to 
190,246, and the Russians from 180,432 to 484,193.^ Are 
we to conclude from this that the American strain will be 
affected by such an infusion of Southern and Oriental, as 
well as negro and Asiatic, blood, and that traditions of ser- 
vitude will be implanted in the land of liberty? It is evi- 
dent that emigrants of the first generation, however rigor- 
ously methods of selection may be applied to them, bring 

^ There are more Israelites (Russian, German, Levantine and others) in 
New York than there are inhabitants in a great capital. New York has 
several Hebrew theaters and Hebrew newspapers. Public notices, in the 
parks for instance, such as " Keep off the grass " are printed in four languages, 
one of which is Hebrew. As many as ten languages are used in the post 
ofl&ces for the convenience of the public. These figures give some idea of 
the difl&culty of governing a great American city. 



5l8 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

constitutional defects with them ; and strange things have 
been said about the original population of Australia ! Men, 
however, like plants, undergo alteration under the influence 
of new soil, climate and ideals. To the land of their choice 
they bring not only their inherited tendencies but a deter- 
mination to begin a new life, and this general aspiration 
towards a better future is, in its influence on the race, more 
important than voluntarily severed associations with the 
past. The second generation differs profoundly from the 
first, which itself becomes considerably modified, and the 
effects of marriage with other elements in the population 
must also be considered. 

We can understand that the United States are a source 
of uneasiness, when judged from the outside by foreigners 
who are disagreeably impressed by their faults but do not 
know their good qualities and do not make the allowances 
to which youth is entitled ; but this impression disappears 
the more one lives in contact with them, speaks their 
language and sees them as they are. This, at least, is 
what I have tried to show. 

5. Conclusion 

The conclusion I have reached is very definite. My 
readers will have guessed what it is. It presented itself 
to my mind before I had completed my observations, and 
had returned to Washington after my travels through the 
interior and along the Pacific coast. It was when I dis- 
covered that the Federal capital, though very beautiful, 
was so far apart from the rest of the country and so close 
to Europe, and when I measured the distance that separates 
the United States from their government ! I have allowed 
the facts to speak for themselves, and I will conclude 
what I have to say neither in a doubting nor in a vaguely 
hopeful spirit. 



AMERICA S DUTY 519 

Distance between the United States and their Government 

There is a marked difference between governmental 
weaknesses and the aspirations of the country. 

Wherever I look, whether it be to the east, the west, the 
north or the south, the country has but one ambition — to 
consolidate what the past has achieved, to "develop its 
internal prosperity by the help of good international re- 
lations" and carry on its work in stability, union and 
the Mount Vernon traditions. Such is the policy of all 
these Americans, whose fathers quitted Europe so that 
they might be free. 

The government, on the other hand, has departed from 
this policy. I have not overlooked the difficulties in its 
path, its efforts or its merits, but, this much being granted, 
it has marched away from the star instead of towards it, 
and it has gone contrary to the aspirations of the country ; 
and the various stages on this march have been excessive 
protection, the war with Spain, colonies and armaments. 
The American government has taken the wrong line, and, 
like all governments, instead of admitting its mistake in 
time, it has obstinately adhered to its course and sunk deeper 
in the quagmire. While the country has kept its ambition 
on a level with the idealism attained by its energetic 
founders, the government has yielded to the temptation 
to sink below that level, and has erroneously supposed that 
the lower would be the more popular. It has chosen the 
wrong kind of ambition. It blushed for the beneficent 
mission incumbent upon it, just as a young man dislikes 
to make himself conspicuous by a good action in the com- 
pany of scoffers. It was afraid of not being like the others, 
of not being a government as great as the greatest govern- 
ments. Its pride, a puerile one, has been to imitate the 
mistakes it ought to have avoided. In other words, it 
has fallen a victim to imperialism. 



520 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

Birth of Imperialism 

It was a very youthful, seductive and perhaps unconscious 
imperialism under President Roosevelt — a budding im- 
perialism; but the buds bore fruit under his successor, 
who could neither approve of its encroachments nor moder- 
ate them. It has excited the alarm of the Republican 
elite, whose strong objections I have underlined, and I was 
thinking of this elite when I said that they were more in 
harmony with the Democrats than with their own party; 
but they have been powerless to stem the tide. The result 
is none the less clear and is to be found in the 191 2 
presidential election. The Republicans were split into two 
bodies, both foredoomed to defeat. One, with very mixed 
feelings, followed President Roosevelt, and the other gave 
a half-hearted support to President Taft, while the country 
gave an overwhelming plurality to the Democrats, the 
party of protest. 

The 191 2 election was an outburst of public opinion, which 
was tired of and in revolt against what had been going on. 
That this is true was shown at once when the new President 
asked Congress to revise the tariff and selected William 
Jennings Bryan, the declared enemy of armaments, as 
secretary of state. But this revolt of public opinion is 
anything but revolutionary and is, on the contrary, quite 
opposed to any such idea. The policy it requires has 
nothing to do with any demagogic threats. It contains 
nothing new and nothing that is not normal or reassuring. 
It amounts to a condemnation of the errors that George 
Washington tried to avert beforehand by denouncing them 
as ''apostasy.'^ It was the protest of a country that is 
pulling itself together, refusing to let itself be led astray 
any longer from its enormous natural sphere of action or 
to rush blindly into adventurous schemes of foreign con- 
quest. It implies a reversion, at last, to the Mount 



America's duty 521 

Vernon spirit and to the policy of safety without which 
the United States would be false to their origin, their name 
and their destiny, and would become an ephemeral cari- 
cature of countless ruined empires. 

The Rights of Man and the Rights of the People 

As I have said, the success of this policy is of the highest 
interest to Europe. It is important that the great trans- 
atlantic republic should so act as to stand out in contrast 
to the weaknesses of the Old World ; that it should set an 
example of numerous and varied states federated together 
in liberty ; that it should thus affirm the possibility of a 
form of progress incredible to the Old World ; and that it 
should at last complete our Declaration of the Rights of 
Man by a Declaration of the Rights of Nations. 

The Renovation of Europe 

The Americans are not free from all obligations towards 
Europe. Let them apply their national enthusiasm to in- 
ternational life. As they call upon children to regenerate 
parents, so let them act as good sons to the countries from 
which they sprang, and let the renovation of Europe be 
their work ! All their initiative, all their good will and all 
their religious zeal combined will not be too much to over- 
come our egoism and routine. Let them be worthy of their 
ancestors and of ours. Let it be their glory to become 
guides and not masters. 

The American's Duty 

Here lies the interest, as well as the duty, of the United 
States. 

FINIS 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE 

The following letter was distributed in December, 1913, 
through the American Association for International Con- 
ciliation to the schools and other groups of yoimg people 
with whom Baron d'Estournelles de Constant had come 
into contact during his visits to the United States and 
Canada. 



HAPPY NEW YEAR TO MY MANY YOUNG 
FRIENDS IN THE UNITED STATES 

Paris, December, 191 3. 
Dear young friends : 

One of your most devoted guides in America asked 
me, two years ago, to let you hear a short talk on help- 
ful subjects for morning exercises, anything, he says, 
to make you happier or better. I kept his fine and gener- 
ous letter a long time on my table ; very often I thought of 
it, but it is only this morning that I can write a suitable 
answer. I will write as I can, knowing that you are not too 
critical, and that you prefer my poor EngHsh to my best 
French. What I care for is not to send you a literary 
message, but to reach your hearts. 

I have traveled a great deal and I am able now to draw 
from the various experiences of my life a conclusion which 
may be of use to you, young friends, who have been so 
kind to me. Supposing that you can avail yourselves of my 
efforts, and that I can save part of your future troubles 
and deceptions, that will be the reward of your kindness, 
and a new illustration of our French proverb : ^'Un bienfait 
n^ est jamais perdu^ 

You cannot know, indeed, what a blessing is the sym- 
pathy of youth for a man or for a woman of good will who 
has been depressed by the cold faces, by the indifference 
and the prejudices of the so-called "reasonable people." 

When I feel sad and nearly discouraged, I can recover 
at once by simply meeting the pure and confident eyes of 
a child ; — even a young dog, suddenly jumping or looking 
at me with joy, can change my mind and refresh it ; it can 

525 



526 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

give me a new start. And so it is with the shining of the 
morning light. 

Be kind, obliging, my dear friends, not only to your 
friends — that is too easy, and it is the only way to win 
their kindness in return — but to every being who may 
take comfort from your kindness. A mere smile may save 
a soul from despair. Never be avaricious of your smiling, 
of your regards, towards people who are in trouble. Some 
powerful men can bring help by their assistance, their 
money, their material strength ; a young man or a young 
woman can do still more by giving his or her sympathy. 
Do not be shy, do not be afraid of being ridiculous ; a man 
who does the good work which the others will not do is often 
ridiculed at first, but not for long ; express your good will 
as you can, with the right words or with no words, as long 
as you do not keep it for yourself alone. 

Be true and faithful ; it is so easy to lie ; but remember 
that we cannot deceive twice the same friend ; we have to 
change him ; and, at length, we find no more friends to 
listen to us; they all know they cannot trust our word. 
Never speak against your past friend; keep silent and 
reserved about his fault, which may be yours; otherwise 
the new friend will find that you can change and he will 
not feel safe with you. 

Never be violent, except to resist a violent aggression, 
if you see no other honorable issue. That is the great 
effort for you ! Violence is such a temptation for a strong 
boy and even for a little boy! I should say even for a 
little girl . . . but the temptation does not last for her; 
she soon" discovers that violence does not pay ; and she 
looks for other ways of maintaining her rights. She actually 
finds these ways. Violence seems, at first, so innocent, so 
easy, so natural ; a mere application of our forces ; some- 
times a precious help ; a good blow ! Is it not a good les- 
son for a bad boy ? Yes, indeed, but a bad example, too ! 



NEW year's letter 527 

Violence is not the way to teach Justice and Right. Sup- 
pose your teachers would use it to illustrate their explana- 
tions to you. . . . There is no limit to violence. Violence 
has no end. It is never a solution. The violent boy has 
to be, every day, stronger than his comrade ; but he cannot 
be as strong as all his comrades together. 

I have always found that violence leads to domination 
and that domination does not last, cannot last ; the end of 
it is, sooner or later, collapse and humiliation. This is 
true for a boy, still more for a man, still more for a nation. 

Never a nation, even a great Empire, could last by 
domination; what they are so proud to call "imperial- 
ism" has been and will be always the beginning of the end ; 
it is now a well-known fever, an archaic illness, a backward 
policy. When the majority of the people of a great coun- 
try stop their work and think only of armaments, conquests 
and ostentation, then it means they are isolating and weaken- 
ing themselves ; instead of friends, they have nobody in the 
world to support them ; far from it ; conceited, suspected 
everywhere, they become a danger for all the other nations. 
Far from being stronger, they feel dissatisfied and angry. 
They are no longer so good at work ; their intellectual and 
moral progress, their industry, their genius and consequently 
their production, artistic, scientific, economic, go lessening 
every year, compared with other nations. They cannot 
even understand the reasons of their inferiority ; they be- 
come jealous and sensitive ; they see enemies, spies, danger 
everywhere ; they may extend their military forces ; but 
their vitality is shrinking. The slightest misunderstanding 
with another nation is sufficient to bring a war which is not 
a remedy, but the end of all. A war, now, is not what it 
was in the past, when the brave chevalier had to face his 
enemy. Now he has to fight at such a distance that he does 
not know and he does not see the other army ; he does not 
even know why he is at war and what will be the results of 



528 AMERICA AND HER PROBLEMS 

the battle, even if victorious. He knows only that the 
nation had to pay, for the preparation of that war, billions 
and billions of dollars which were needed to make the coun- 
try really strong and prosperous, surrounded by friends 
and customers, billions which were wanted for making 
good roads, restoring the forests and the rivers, building 
railways, ports, universities, hospitals, museums, parks 
and fine cities. He knows that the nation will have to pay 
still more after the war, in order to be more and more unsafe 
and isolated. 

You, American young friends, you are a new nation, a 
new, living hope for the world. I expect a great deal, for 
the future of the old Europe, from your good will and your 
good faith. Do not imitate our faults! Do not become 
too matter of fact, too self-confident; do not dream of 
extending your country which is already — compared to 
ours in Europe — as large as a continent ; that is my 
Christmas wish : keep young, keep kind, keep true, con- 
fident in your future, faithful to your past. Never forget 
our common ancestors, our French pioneers, from La Salle 
to Lafayette and de Lesseps, who so wilHngly devoted 
their lives to prepare yours; it is not enough for you to 
accept their legacy, you have to develop it, that is to say, 
to increase its value, not its size ; you have to make your 
new world so good that it becomes an example for our old 
one. Yes ! we need your American initiative as you need 
our experience. No more than a man, can a nation live 
alone. Your progress will stimulate our progress; your 
faults would stop our way as well as yours. 

And now, good-by, dear friends ; no, good morning — 
never good-by — we never die as long as we leave our 
work behind us ; good morning to you ; happy day, happy 
New Year. . . . The sky has not changed, the cold winter 
prepares a mild spring ; enjoy your life, enjoy your day ; 



NEW year's letter 529 

consider your teachers as your friends; listen to them; 
think of them ; speak of them ; you will make them happier 
and better; and you will then feel yourselves in better 
spirits to play your fascinating baseball, to ride your 
bicycle or your horse, to drive your motor car (if you can 
get one), to paddle your canoe ; to swim in the deep waters, 
to walk, to run, to climb, to breathe. . . . Don't forget to 
learn French, in order to come and see me and to make 
new friends in the old world ; be happy, be gay, be strong, 
in order to help any one who needs your health and your 
strength. The more you help other people, the more you 
will find everywhere assistance and sympathy. The more 
your country will appear friendly to other nations, the 
greater and happier she will be. 

There is the fruit of all my political experience ; that is 
what I would call the modern wisdom of men as well as of 

nations. 

d'Estournblles de Constant. 



2M 



INDEX 



Absolutism, opposition to, spread by 
Russian and Polish students in Amer- 
ica, 257. 

Adler, Felix, and the Ethical Culture 
Society, 385- 

Advertising of churches, 385. 

Africa, reminders of, in southern United 
States, 23 ; as a future competitor 
of United States, 468. 

Agriculture, in California, 45-46; Cali- 
fornia crops, 52; in Oregon, 90; dry 
farming system, 98-100; about 
Kansas City, 145-146 ; a model farm, 
406-407; in provinces of Canada, 

451-454- 

Air, blessings of pure, 292. 

Alamo massacre, 29. 

Alaska, the future of, 84-85. 

Alaska- Yukon-Pacific Exhibition, Seat- 
tle, 82-83. 

Alberta, population of, 449. 

Almy, Francis, at Buffalo, 442. 

Alsace-Lorraine question, the, 216-217; 
Americans and the, 217-218. 

American Civic Association, 296. 

Anderson, Hendrik C, architect, 16. 

Animals, raising of domestic, in Cali- 
fornia, 46; in Rock Creek Park, 
Washington, 298-299; in Canada, 
452. 

Annapolis, Naval Academy at, 320, 492. 

Apple raising, in Washington and Ore- 
gon, 91-92 ; lessons in, to be learned 
from America, 403. 

Arbitration treaties, made by President 
Taft, 309-310. 

Architecture, of New York City, 5-6; 
in Washington, D. C, 282. 

Arizona, size and desert land, 42 ; woman 
suffrage in, 72. 

Arkansas River, 104. 



Armament, increase of naval, in United 
States, discouraged, 484 ff. 

Armed peace system, disadvantages of, 
to European nations, 460 ff. ; America 
warned against, 476-477. 

Army, the American, 12, 25, 35-36, 136; 
figures and present status of, 480- 
482 ; militia viewed as the real, 482- 
484. 

Art, in Mrs. Potter Palmer's house, Chi- 
cago, 242 ; position of Americans 
concerning, 244-245; process of 
formation of natural taste in Amer- 
ica, 303 ; in American museums, 405. 

Austin University, visit to, 24. 

Australia, natural resources and com- 
petition of, with United States, 468. 

Austria, effect upon, of European War, 
230. 

Automatic telephone, Portland, Oregon, 
94. 

Automobiles, in Kansas City, 149-150. 

Aviation, peace and, 273-274. 

B 

Bacon, Robert, 17, 325; resignation of 
Paris embassy to become Fellow of 
Harvard, 330. 

Baker, James H., president of Boulder 
University, 109. 

Baltimore, visit to, 17. 

Banquets, women at, 152-153. 

Barbers and barber shops, 250-252. 

Bargy, Henry, 332; quoted, 336. 

Barrett, John, work as director-general 
of Pan-American Bureau, 15. «g 

Baseball, American national game, 180; 
exposition of, 204-206. 

Battleships, foolishness of building too 
big, 487, 495 ; helplessness against 
submarines, mines, and torpedoes, 
487-488 ; personnel of crews of Amer- 



S3I 



532 



INDEX 



ican, 492 n. ; lessons concerning, to 
be learned from European War, 495 fif . 

Beauty, religion of, in America, 292. 

Beet-sugar production in Utah, 99. 

Benoit-Levy, G., works by, on city-plan- 
ning questions, 294, 295 n. 

Berkeley University, coeducation at, 55 ; 
account of visit to, 55-57- 

Bertin, M., quoted on folly of too big 
naval ships, 487 ; on effect of torpe- 
does in naval warfare, 488. 

Bigelow, John, 44; work for children, 
412. 

Birds, in United States, 180; in Rock 
Creek Park, Washington, 298-299; 
leagues for protection of, 299. 

Blackbirds, 180, 299. 

Bleriot, aviator, at Yale with the author, 

335- 
Bluebird, the, seen in Rock Creek Park, 
Washington, 299 ; suitable as a sym- 
bol for a society with an ideal, 299- 

300- 

Books, American, 249-250; on city- 
planning questions, 295 n. 

Boston, the Symphony Orchestra, 246; 
headquarters of Christian Science 
religion, 37s, 381, 383; Phillips 
Brooks House, 391-392 ; prosperity 
joined with idealism in, 403-404. 

Boulder University, Easter Sunday ad- 
dress and reception at, 108-110. 

Bracq, M., at Vassar College, 331. 

Brashear, John A., epitaph by, 412. 

Brest, port of, lack of modern facilities 
at, 459-460. 

British Columbia, population of, 449. 

Britt, Gustave T., Napoleon of house- 
movers, 439, 440. 

Brookings, Robert, 156; as a represent- 
ative of American idealism, 172-173; 
personal appearance, 173; home, 180; 
public interests, 182-183. 

Brooks, Phillips, quoted, 255 ; on moral 
and social work of American churches, 
386; commemoration of memory of, 
391-392. 

Brown, Glen, history of Washington by, 
quoted, 289. 

Bryan, W. J., home of, at Lincoln, Ne- 
braska, 137-138; meeting with, in 
Chicago, 239-240; organization of 
arbitration supported by, 344; sig- 



nificance of appointment as secretary 
of state, 520. 

Buffalo, N. Y., a transportation center, 
431-432; moving of house at, 439- 
441 ; automatic unloading of ore at, 
442-443. 

Bunau-Varilla, Philippe, resurrection of 
Panama Canal project by, 503. 

Butler, Nicholas Murray, 17, 307 ; weight 
attached to views of, 329 ; on religious 
instruction at Columbia University, 
336; American International Con- 
ciliation branch founded by, 337-338. 

Butter, made in San Francisco, 52. 



California, distances in, 43-44; the 
agricultural problem, 45-46; ques- 
tion of yellow immigration, 47 ff. ; 
number of Japanese in, 49 ; a garden 
land, 50-51, 54; orchards, 51; wine, 
51-52; dairy products, 52; petro- 
leum, 52-53 ; tourist traffic, 53 ; wo- 
men, 54 ; coeducation at universities, 
55~57; campaign for votes for 
women, 59-72 ; earthquakes, 167- 
168; Christian Science churches, 

379. 

Cambon, Jules, as ambassador at Wash- 
ington, 18; at interview with Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, 307 ; assistance of, in 
interesting United States in Hague 
tribunal, 307, 308, 309. 

Canada, competition of, with United 
States, 444 ff ; advantages possessed 
by, 446-447 ; a field for modern ex- 
periments, 447 ; size and characteris- 
tics of population, 448-450 ; progress 
of cities, 450; agriculture in, 451- 
454; tracing the reasons for pros- 
perity and progress of, 461 ff. ; Si- 
beria compared to, 470-471. 

Canals, transportation on, 427 ff. ; as 
auxiliaries to railroads, 428; the 
Erie, Ohio, and other, 429; out- 
stripped by railroads, 430 ; in Canada, 

457- 
Carnegie, Andrew, peace palace erected 

at Hague by, 309 ; work as a public 

benefactor, 401-402. 
Cathedral Spires, in Garden of the Gods, 

106. 



INDEX 



533 



Catholics, position of, in America, rela- 
tive to the Church, 373 ; revolt of 
French religious spirit misunder- 
stood by, 393 ; philanthropic and 
social activities of, in France, 397. 

Celery from Utah, 99. 

Chamber of Commerce, Denver, 11 5-1 17. 

Chassaignac, M., 21. 

Chateaubriand, comparison of Washing- 
ton's work and Napoleon's, 311. 

Chicago, latest developments in, 233 flf. ; 
bustle and noise, 237-238; Union 
League Club luncheon, 239-241 ; 
American clear-sightedness and inde- 
pendence manifested in, 240 ; Sunday 
in, 241 ; Mrs. Potter Palmer's resi- 
dence, 242 ; meeting at the Orches- 
tral Hall, 242-244; the Sunday 
Evening Club, 244; musical pur- 
suits, 246; barber shops, 250-252; 
competition of, with Pittsburgh in 
manufacturing, 426-427. 

Chicago, University of, 252-254. 

Children, supremacy of, in United States, 
267 ; in Washington, D. C, 283-284; 
leagues of, against dirt in cities, 294 ; 
institutions for abnormal, 320 ; meet- 
ing of school children in New York, 
332-333 ; philanthropic work for, 
407 flf . ; teaching to play, 408-409 ; 
need for space, air, nature, quiet, 409 ; 
Playground Associations for, 409- 
416. 

China, students from, abroad, 49-50; 
revolutionary ideas in, 258 ff. ; ad- 
miration and confidence felt for stu- 
dents from, in America, 258; rela- 
tions which Western countries should 
establish with, 260-261. 

Chinese, problem of immigration into 
United States, 47 ff. 

Choate, Joseph H., at Hague Congress, 
179. 

Choate, Rufus, on plan of Washington, 
286. 

Chouteau family, exploits in Louisiana, 
i6a-i6i. 

Christian Science, churches of, in United 
States and abroad, 375, 378-379; 
discussion of, 376 ff. ; description of 
a meeting, 377; account of origin, 
37Q-380; cathedral of, in Boston, 
383; question of final outcome, 384. 



Christian Science Monitor, excellence as a 
newspaper, 381-383. 

Christmas, open-air-concert celebration, 
at San Francisco, 347-348. 

Church in America. See Religion. 

Churches, in Seattle, 81, 398-401 ; edu- 
cational mission of, 81, 336-337. 

Cincinnati, visit to, 264 ff. ; prosperity 
and importance as a business center, 
270-271 ; addresses at banquet, 271- 
272. 

Cities, disadvantages of American, 5; 
gigantic character, 75; separation 
of business and residential sections, 
as illustrated by St. Louis, 164; 
lack of terminal facilities for rail- 
roads, 189-190, 455; modern art of 
planning, 290, 291-292 ; progress 
made in life in, 292-293 ; cleanliness 
necessary to charm, 294 ; the crusade 
against dirt in, 294-296; population 
and progress of Canadian, 450. 

City planning, Washington an example 
of, 291. 

Cleveland, Ohio, present size and bril- 
liant future, 270; a competitor of 
Pittsburgh in steel manufacture, 
443- 

Cliff Drive, Kansas City, 1 51-152. 

Climate, of California, 52 ; varieties of, 
in America, 165-166, 254; of Canada, 
447. 

Clubs, international, in America, 207, 
256-257; German, in Milwaukee, 
212; musical, 212, 213, 246; spread 
of revolutionary ideas aided by in- 
ternational, 256-257. 

Coeducation, in Western universities, 
55 ; at University of Wisconisn, 197 ; 
why possible in United States, 252 ; 
at University of Chicago, 253-254; 
some disadvantages of, 254; general 
in the West but losing ground in the 
East, 330; advantages to students, 
330-331. 

College, the American, 319-320. 

Colorado, woman suffrage in, 72 ; sce- 
nery, 103-106 ; the Indians and their 
fate, 106-108; Boulder University 
and Easter Sunday, 108-110; Den- 
ver banquet, 111-115; Chamber of 
Commerce, Denver, 115-117; news- 
paper attacks on pubhc men, 1 17-1 19 ; 



534 



INDEX 



magnificence of capitol, iig; visit 

to legislature, 1 19-123 ; visit to Chief 

Justice, 123-124. 
Colorado River, 103-104. 
Colorado Springs, description of, 105. 
Columbia River, beauty of, 94. 
Columbia River valley, 93-94- 
Columbia University, Commencement 

Day at, 328; religious toleration at, 

336. 
Columbus, Ohio, musical societies at, 

246; importance as a commercial 

center, 270. 
Competition, United States threatened 

with universal, 467 flf. 
Consuls, French, 19. 
Convents, closing of, in France, 395. 
Cooking, Calif ornian, 52. 
Coolie immigration, 47 ff. 
Cornel trees, Rock Creek Park, 298. 
Comet-playing by a woman, 114-115. 
Cosmopolitan Student, The, 257 ; article 

in, quoted, 258. 
Cotton, exported from Seattle, 86 ; mo- 
nopoly enjoyed by, in United States, 

514- 
Craighead, Dr., president of Tulane 

University, 22. 
Crest, Paul, architect of Pan-American 

building, Washington, 15. 
Cuba, qualities of negroes in, 365-366; 

future competition of, with United 

States, 467-468. 

D 

Dairy products, California, 52. 
Daniels, Josephus, report by, quoted, 

486 n. 
Dardanelles, conclusions from opera- 
tions in, in European War, 497. 
Davis, G. W., article by, cited, 508. 
Davis, Payne, apostle of Christian 

Science, 377. 
Davis, W. M., scientific excursion of, 

99-100. 
Deforestation in America, 88-89. 
De Lesseps, Charles, heroism of conduct, 

501-502. 
De Lesseps, Ferdinand, memories of, in 

Chicago, 240-241 ; wrongs inflicted 

upon, 501-502. 
Demangeon, A., quoted, 433. 



Denmark, valiant part taken by, in 
economic conflict, 474-475. 

Denver, visit to, 1 10-124; musical ac- 
tivities, 246. 

Diaz, Porfirio, 26; results of dictator- 
ship of, 27-28, 36, 37, 38. 

Dietitian, ofl&ce of, in American families, 
322-323, 381. 

Dining cars, excellence of food, 135-136. 

Diplomacy, French, 18-20. 

Diplomatic corps, Washington, influence 
on social circles, 311. 

Distances, American and European 
ideas of, 42-44. 

District of Columbia, political position 
and government of, 281. 

Doggerbank affair, 129, 494. 

Downer College, 210. 

Drainage Canal, Chicago, 235-236. 

Dreadnought fever, contagiousness of, 
464-466. 

Drink question, women and the, 262- 
264. 

Dry farming, system of, 98-100. 

Duluth, origins, 170; importance as 
a port, 191-192; combined use 
of trains and boats at, 422-423 ; a 
competitor of Pittsburgh in steel 
manufacture, 433. 

E 

Eagle, question of suitability as a sym- 
bol for United States, 300, 313. 

Earle, Mrs. C. W., works on city-plan- 
ning questions by, 295 n. 

Early rising in America and in France, 
206. 

Earthquakes in California, 50-51, 167- 
168. 

Easter Sunday at Boulder University, 
108-110. 

Eddy, Mary Baker, foimder of Chris- 
tian Science religion, 375, 376, 379- 
380; policy of Christian Science 
Monitor laid down by, 382. 

Education, attention paid to, in Kansas 
City, 147; comparative importance 
of politics and, in America, 198, 201 ; 
as an ideal in America, 316-317; 
usefulness an object of, 317 ; freedom 
of, 318-319; classes of establish- 
ments for, 319-320. 



INDEX 



535 



Educators, political freedom of American, 
337-338. 

Elections in United States, 306. 

Electric-lighting system, Seattle, 76. 

Electric tramways, transformations in 
modern life due to, 391-392. 

Eliot, Charles W., weight attached to 
views of, 329; conception of reli- 
gion, 336-337- 

El Paso, Texas, 26. 

Emerson Union for Ideal Culture, 296. 

England, suflfragettes in, 66; travelers 
from, in Paris, 172. 

English, attitude toward learning foreign 
languages, 174-175. 

Epitaph by Dr. Brashe r, 412. 

Eppendorff, John G., 442. 

Erie Canal, 429. 

European War, patriotic devotion and 
public spirit of women during, 66 n. ; 
Germany and the, 208 n., placing 
the responsibility for, 223 fif.; re- 
sults to be foreseen, 226-232 ; les- 
sons concerning naval armaments to 
be learned from, 495 ff. 

Exchange teachers and students, 17-18. 

Explorers, early French, in Louisiana, 
157-161 ; monuments to, 434-435. 



Factories, scientific management of, 404. 

Faith of Americans, 370. 

Family life, in France, 63-66; in Amer- 
ica, 306. 

Farm, a model, 406-407. 

Farms. See Agriculture. 

Fashions, Parisian, in America, 20-21, 195. 

Finley, Carlos, discoverer of malarial- 
fever microbe, 505. 

Finley, John H., interest in Franco- 
American relations in the past, 169- 
170. 

Flag, following the, when in good hands, 
112-114. 

Floods, American attitude toward, 166- 
167. 

Flowers. See Gardening. 

Food on dining cars, 135-136. 

Football, as physical and moral train- 
ing, 206. 

Foreign languages, stimulating Ameri- 
cans to learn, 176-179. 



Forsee, George H., 154. 

Fort Duquesne, 421, 423. 

Fortier, A., 21. 

France, bonds between America and, 
8-9, 169-170; Americans' love for, 
9; resentment of spirit of initiative 
in, 18, 93; diplomacy of, 18-20; 
lack of news from, in American papers, 
20; reminders of, in New Orleans, 
21-22; called "la belle France," 23; 
interests of, in Mexico, 28; colonial 
expansion, and dangers, 35 ; Chinese 
students in, 50; young Americans 
in, 57-59; status of women, 62-66; 
openings for workers and profes- 
sional people, in America, 88; scien- 
tific agriculture in, 89; comparison 
of farming methods in America and 
in, 90-93 ; as the sower of seed in the 
form of humane ideas, 139 ; an Amer- 
ican traveler's views of, 139-143; 
horses imported to America from, 146- 
147 ; American students of archi- 
tecture in, 151 ; memories of, aroused 
by arrival at St. Louis, 155-156; 
idealism of, and that of America, 
171; spirit of, remaining in the 
Mississippi Valley, 1 71-172; differ- 
ence between railroad building in, 
and in America, 188; early rising in, 
206; universities of, avoided by 
America as examples, 213; disasters 
suffered by, but not decadence, 214- 
215; famous savants, artists, and 
men of action, 215; attitude pro- 
duced in, by German militarism, 216- 
217, 220-222; influence of, on art 
and music in America, 244, 246; 
position in European War, 274 n. ; 
extermination of birds in, 298-299; 
gratitude shown to, in Washington, 
305; effect of wars of, in keeping 
teachers at home, 324; significance 
of names of political parties in, 345 ; 
reason for English triumph over, in 
the New World, 352-353 ; discussion 
of revolt of French religious spirit 
in, 393 ; painful period of seculariza- 
tion of religion in, 394-396; apple 
raising in, as compared with America, 
403 ; works of art from, in America, 
405 ; need of transportation faciUties 
in, 424-425 ; monuments to explorers 



536 



INDEX 



from, 434-435; agricultural methods 
in, compared with those in Canada, 
453-454; contrasted with United 
States and Canada in manner of carry- 
ing out public works, 458-460; draw- 
backs to, of living in a state of armed 
peace, 460-461. 

French, colony of, in San Francisco, 45. 

French language, stimulating Americans 
to learn the, 176-179; spoken by 
foreign representatives at Hague 
congresses, 178-179; lack of French 
teachers of, in America, 324-325 ; 
taught by Germans, Swiss, and Bel- 
gians, 325-326. 

French Revolution, spirit of, in United 
States, 386-388. 

Frissel, HoUis Burke, on the negro prob- 
lem, 366-367. 

Fruit raising, in California, 51 ; in Amer- 
ica, 403-404; in Ontario, 451. 



Galveston, Texas, prosperity of, 24; 
progress after flood, 167. 

Gardening, advance in art of, in United 
States, 300-301 ; simplification of, 
302. 

Garden of the Gods, the, 106. 

Germany, interests of, in Mexico, 28; 
attitude of people toward European 
War, 208 n. ; well-deserved success 
of, 212-215; price paid by, for vic- 
tories, 215; brutalizing effect of 
triumph of mere force, 215; idealism 
of, stifled by militarism, 216; the 
Alsace-Lorraine question, 216-217; 
disgust of the whole world with mili- 
tarism of, 218-219; results to, of 
European War, 230-232 ; teachers 
from, in American universities, 324. 

Gibbons, Cardinal, revolt of French re- 
ligious spirit condemned by, 393. 

Gide, Charles, works on municipal clean- 
liness by, 294. 

Gillet, Louis, quoted concerning L'En- 
fant, 289. 

Ginn, Edwin, philanthropic work of, 
402. 

Girard, Etienne, statue of, in Philadel- 
phia, 9. 

Goethals, Colonel, work at Panama, 504. 



Gold mining. Western, 95-97 ; in Alaska, 

451- 
Good will, American, 181. 
Gouin, Sir Lomer, prime minister of 

province of Quebec, 457. 
Grand Army of the Republic, object of, 

to increase pension list, 515-516. 
Grand Central Terminal, New York, 6, 

190. 
Great Britain, army of, 25 ; interests in 

Mexico, 28 ; as a competitor of United 

States, 472. 
Great Lakes, frieght traffic on, 191-194, 

235- 
Great Northern Railroad, 85. 
Greek type found in American college 

students, 332. 
Griffon monument. La Salle Creek, 434- 

435- 

H 

Hague tribunal, work of, 40-41 ; part 
taken by United States, 138-139; 
American linguists at meetings, 178- 
179; President Roosevelt's attitude 
toward, 307-308; feelings of repre- 
sentatives at first meetings, 390. 

Hale, Edward Everett, on American 
attitude toward religion, 387-388. 

Hampton Institute, school for negroes, 
366. 

Harbors, inadequacy of modern, 4. 

Harriman, E. H., as a public benefactor, 
296. 

Havre, inadequacy of harbor, 4. 

Hay, John, and the Hague tribunal, 308 ; 
on throwing open Panama Canal to 
every nation on the same terms, 
510. 

Hay-Pauncefote treaty, quoted, 511. 

Hearst publications, the, 31-32, 465. 

Hebrard, Ernest M., architect, 16. 

Hennepin, Father, monument to, 435. 

Hepburn, Barton, 325. 

Highroads, lack of sufficient number, in 
America, 94 ; system of national, 434. 

Hill, David Jayne, 179, 329. 

Hill, James J., 85, 186; picture gallery 
of, 195; "Highways of Progress " by, 
quoted, 195-196; cited on compara- 
tive growth of railroads and traffic, 
426. 

Hill, Samuel, 94. 



INDEX 



537 



Hobson, Richmond P., advocate of a 

greater navy, 508. 
Hells, Frederick W., 178, 307. 
Homes, in France, 63-66 ; American, 306. 
Horses, importation of French, 146-147. 
Horticulture, progress in, in United 

States, 300-303. 
Hospitality, American, 1 80-1 81. 
House, E. M., 24. 
Houses, modern moving methods, 76- 

78, 439-441. 
Houston, D. F., chancellor of St. Louis 

University, 182, 183. 
Houston, Texas, 24. 
Howard, E., works by, on city -planning 

questions, 295 n. 
Hudson Bay district, proposed railroads 

in, 457-458. 
Huerta, General, government of, 37-38. 
Hutchinson, Mr., gold miner, 95-96. 



Idaho, woman suffrage in, 72. 

Idealism, French and English, 170-171; 
a representative type of American, 
172-173; contest between militar- 
ism and, in Germany, 216; as an 
impelling force in United States, 315 
flf. ; in education in America, 316- 
317 ; conjunction of prosperity and, 
403 ; of United States as a whole 
contrasted with imperialism of its 
government, 519. 

Immigration, conditions and statistics 
of, 517-518. 

Impatience, the typical American, shown 
in treatment of Indians, 353. 

Imperialism, German, 220-222; vicious 
circle of reasoning based on, 497- 
498; growth of, in United States, 
shown by fortifying of Panama Canal, 
507; development in United States, 
519-521; a backward policy, a sign 
of the beginning of the end, 525. 

Indians, thoughts suggested by fate of, 
106-108; primitive music of, 248- 
249 ; Lake Mohonk conferences 
concerning, 351 ; consideration of 
problem of, 352-358; blood of, found 
in present-day North Americans, 
357-358; reaction in favor of, 358; 
numbers in United States, 358. 



Initiative, hostility of French govern- 
ment to, 18, 93 ; spirit of, in education 
in America, 318 ; developed in Amer- 
ican college students, 334-335 ; apo- 
theosis of, at Pittsburgh, 423-424; 
spirit of, shown in France in past 
forty years, 472. 

Inland navigation, in LTnited States, 
427-433; in Canada, 456-457. 

Insects, American, 166. 

International Arbitration Conferences 
at Lake Mohonk, 338. 

International clubs in United States, 
207, 256-257. 

International Conciliation Society, 13; 
branch in America, 337-338. 

International Harvester Company works, 
Chicago, 234. 

International News Service, 31. 

International relations, American need 
of increased knowledge in, 165. 

Ireland, Archbishop, 186; speech by, 
in French, 195 ; reason why never 
made a cardinal, 373 ; clergy and sem- 
inary of, 384-385. 

Irrigation, in California, 52 ; in Utah, 98- 
99. 

Italy, as a competitor for the world's 
markets, 472. 



James, William, quotation from, 182. 

Japan, attitude of, toward emigration 
of workers, 47-48 ; students from, in 
United States, 48, 126-127; possibil- 
ity of war with United States, 54, 74, 
125-133; entente cordiale advocated 
by Colonel Thompson, 269. 

Japanese, as servants in California, 45 ; 
problem of immigration into United 
States, 47 £f. ; numbers of, in Cali- 
fornia, Washington, and whole United 
States, 49. 

Jokes, American, 186-187. 

Joliet, Illinois, disadvantages of, 236. 

Jones family, St. Louis, 180. 

Jordan, David Starr, 55 ; description of 
San Francisco earthquake, 167-168. 

Judges, recall of, 514-515. 

Judson, Harry Pratt, president of Uni- 
versity of Chicago, 252-253. 

Juneau, Solomon, 212. 



538 



INDEX 



Jusserand, M., as ambassador at Wash- 
ington, 1 8, 19. 

K 

Kansas, woman suflFrage in, 69, 72. 

Kansas City, another "hub of the uni- 
verse," 144; prosperity, 144-145; 
an agricultural center, 145-146; 
French horses at, 146-147 ; banks, 
schools, and labor conditions, 147- 
148; school-teachers, 148; news- 
papers, 149 ; automobile dangers, 149- 
150; park and boulevards, 150-152; 
Missouri River at, 152; Knife and 
Fork Club, 153-154. 

Kindergartens in America, 320. 

Knox, secretary of state imder President 
Taft, 310. 

Kubelik, playing of, at open-air Christ- 
mas concert in San Francisco, 248. 



Labor, scarcity of, in United States, 12, 
22, 44, 193; wages paid, 44-45, 148, 
193- 

Lafayette, statues of, 9, 18, 305 ; memo- 
ries of, in American cities, 271. 

Lafayette College, 328-329. 

Lake Mohonk, International Arbitra- 
tion Conferences at, 338 ; account of 
Smiley brothers' work at, 338-345. 

La Salle, Cavalier de, memories of, 156, 
157-158, 159, 434, 435. 

La Salle Creek, trip to, 434-435. 

Ledoux, Mr., mining engineer, 170. 

Legislative system, of Colorado, 120; 
of Wisconsin, 198-201. 

L'Enfant, Pierre Charles, career of, 285- 
289. 

Liberia, Republic of, failure as a solution 
of the negro problem, 363. 

Liberty, dangers accompanying planting 
of seeds of, in foreign students in 
United States, 207-208. 

Lincoln, Nebraska, visit to, 136-144. 

Literature, American, 249-250. 

Live stock, raising of, in California, 46; 
in Washington and Oregon, 90-91. 

Los Angeles, distances in, 43. 

Louisiana, early French explorers in, 157- 
161 ; secured to France by La Salle, 
xs8; selling of, 162. 



Low, Seth, 178, 307, 328, 329; model 
farm owned by, 406-407. 

Lowell, A. Lawrence, president of Har- 
vard University, 329. 

Loyson, Father Hyacinthe, 392. 

Luncheon, the American, 239. 

Lynch law in America, 361. 

M 

McCormick, Cyrus, 237. 

Machinery, farming by, in Oregon, 90; 
in Canada, 453-454. 

"Madame Sherry" company, 87-88. 

Madero, murder of, 37. 

Madison, Wisconsin, description, 196; 
lake and university at, 196-198. 

Mahan, Alfred T., warning against in- 
crease in naval armament, 488. 

Manicurist, American type of, 251-252. 

Manitoba, population of, 449. 

Manufactures, prosperity in New Eng- 
land, 404. 

Marburg, Theodore, 268. 

Margaret Morrison School, Pittsburgh, 
321-322. 

Marquette, Pere, 157; remembered in 
Chicago, 242 ; monument to, at St. 
Ignatius Point, 435. 

Massachusetts, Sunday laws in early, 
371- 

Matthews, Mark Allison, minister of 
Presbyterian Church, Seattle, 398- 
401. 

Mediterranean coast, the French, 23. 

Metropolitan Museum, New York, 405. 

Mexico, the revolution in, 11 fif. ; atti- 
tude of United States toward, 11-12 ; 
a collective intervention advised, 13; 
dangers to United States of war with, 
14 ; soldiers of, 26 ; results of Diaz's 
dictatorship, 27-28; propaganda of 
the Hearst publications, 30-32 ; Presi- 
dent Taft's firmness, 32-33, 483 ; 
American party in, 33-35 ; President 
Wilson's policy, 36, 38-39; murder 
of President Madero, 37; govern- 
ment of Huerta, 37-38; moral in- 
tervention necessary, 39-40. 

Meyer, George von L., quoted, 489- 
490. 

Mezes, President. Austin University, 24. 

Michigan, woman suffrage in, 72. 



INDEX 



539 



Middle class in United States, 304 ; con- 
structive function of, 347. 

Middlemen, necessity of, 192-193. 

"Might makes right" doctrine, Ger- 
many's, 215-222; at Panama, 509. 

Militarism, German idealism stifled by, 
216 ; disgust of world in general with, 
218-219; whole of modern democracy 
is against, 221-222; the outcome of, 
226-232. 

Militia, company of, at Lincoln, Ne- 
braska, 136; at University of Wiscon- 
sin, 203 ; real national force in, when 
properly organized and developed, 
482. 

Milwaukee, vi^it to, 209 ff. ; Lake com- 
merce at, 2 10-21 1 ; picturesque sur- 
roundings, 211; growth and popula- 
tion, 212; German activities in, 212 ; 
Socialism among Germans, 216; mu- 
sical interests, 246. 

Mind cures, 378-389. 

Minneapolis, visit to, 186, 187 S. 

Mississippi River, at St. Louis, 157; be- 
tween St. Paul and St. Louis, 184-186. 

Missouri River, failure of, at Kansas 
City, 152. 

Model farm, Seth Low's, 406-407. 

Monet, Claude, 105 ; pictures by, in Mrs. 
Potter Palmer's collection, 242. 

Montana, woman suffrage in, 72. 

Morgan, Pierpont, as a public bene- 
factor, 268, 296. 

Mormons, agricultural methods of, 98- 
100 ; polygamy among, 100-102 ; 
reason for persistence of religion of, 

375- 

Mount Vernon, significance of, to Amer- 
icans, 304-305- 

Municipal improvement, leagues for, 
294-296. 

Museums, American, 405. 

Music, in America, 203, 246 ; success of 
German clubs, 212, 213; at Orches- 
tral Hall meeting, Chicago, 242, 244; 
position of Americans concerning, 
244 flf. ; why Americans need, 245 ; 
love of the people for, 247 ; open-air 
concert at Christmas, in San Francisco, 
247-248 ; attempts to preserve primi- 
tive Indian and negro music, 248- 
249; activities in, at First Presby- 
terian Church, Seattle, 399. 



N 

Naval warfare, changes in, due to sub- 
marines, mines, and torpedoes, 487- 
488. 

Navy, of United States, 484 ff. ; folly of 
too big ships, 487, 488; and the 
policy of intervention, 492-494; 
lessons of European War, 495 flf. ; 
the Philippines and Panama Canal 
as pretexts for developing American, 
499-501. 

Negroes, primitive music of, 248-249; 
schools for education of, 320; prob- 
lem presented by, in United States, 
358 ff. ; under slavery, 359-361 ; 
present condition in the South, 361- 
363 ; question of place of, in a white 
democracy, 363-368; possibility of 
development, 365-367 ; the most 
ominous question for future of 
United States, 369. 

New France, memories of, 155 ff. ; the 
end of, 163. 

New Orleans, reminders of France in, 
20-21. 

Newspapers, American, 10; the Hearst 
pubUcations, 31-32, 465; attitude 
on Pacific coast, toward yellow 
immigration, 48-49; attacks by, 
on public officials in Colorado, 118; 
of Kansas City, 149; Sunday, 169; 
in Chicago, 234; Christian Science 
Monitor, 381-383 ; agitating policy 
of certain French, 395. 

New York City, bad planning of, 5-6; 
effect of skyscrapers, 7-8; an out- 
of-date creation, 8 ; meeting of school 
children in, 323-333; Metropolitan 
Museum, 405; foreign-born in- 
habitants, 517. 

New York harbor, inadequacy, 4. 

New York State, status of woman suf- 
frage in, 72. 

Niagara Falls, electric-railway trans- 
portation at, 427 ; disciplining of, 
435-436; thoughts suggested by, 

437. 
Niagara River, profanation of banks of, 

445-446. 
Normal School, New York, lecture at, 

332. 
Normal schools in America, 320. 



540 



INDEX 



Northern Pacific Railroad, 85. 
Norway, resources and energy, 473-474- 

O 

Ocean, empire of, an idle dream, 133. 
Oceans as a protection to United States, 

48s. 
"Odyssey," acted by Wellesley College 

students, 331. 
Ohio Canal, 429. 
Ohio River at Cincinnati, 266. 
Ontario, population of, 449. 
Orchards, of California, 51 ; of Canada, 

451. 
Orchestral Hall, Chicago, meeting in, 

242-243. 
Orchestras, American, 88, 246. 
Ore boats, automatic unloading of, 422- 

423, 442-443. 
Oregon, woman suffrage in, 72 ; wheat 

harvesting, 90; apple raising, 9i~92. 
Organization, regulated by the need of 

security, 97. 
Organizing ability of Americans, 92. 
Outdoor sports, the moral equivalent of 

war from educational point of view, 

343. 



Pacific Ocean as "an American lake," 

499. 
Pageant for children at Pittsburgh, 412- 

415- 

Palmjer, Mrs. Potter, 242. 

Panama Canal, part taken by French 
in bringing about, 240-241 ; America 
finishing what France began at, 
501 ; De Lesseps' work, 501-502 ; 
resurrection of, by Bunau-Varilla, 
503; completion of, by American 
energy, 504-505 ; mistake of fortify- 
ing, 506-510; question of tolls, 
510-513. 

Pan-American Bureau, Washington, 14- 
16; desirability of, in Europe, 16-17. 

Pan-American Conciliation Institute, 17. 

Pan-American Union, 202. 

Panic, railroad, in United States, 189, 
191. 

Paris, fashions from, in America, 21, 
195; English travelers in, 172; 
influence of Seine River, 185 ; points 



of resemblance between plan of, and 
that of Washington, 287, 288; 
original plan of city, and present-day 
mistakes, 290-291 ; playground as- 
sociations in, 415 ; the Trocadero 
as a blot, 445-446. 

Paris, Treaty of, 161. 

Parks, at St. Louis, 180; about Mil- 
waukee, 211. 

Park system, Kansas City, 150-152, 

Pasadena, villas and gardens at, 54. 

Peace, doctrines of, 137; American 
desire for, as expressed at St. Louis, 
169-170; speeches in favor of, at 
Cincinnati banquet, 272; and avia- 
tion, 273-274; teachings of, at Lake 
Mohonk, 343 ; attitude of Christian 
Scientists, 378; relation of transport 
facilities and, 425 ; benefits of, as 
shown in United States and Canada, 
461 ; advantages resulting to America 
from, 476-477. 

Peace organization and political economy, 
202. 

Peace palace built at Hague by Andrew 
Carnegie, 309. 

Pennsylvania Station, New York City, 
6, 190. 

Pensions in United States, 479; main 
reason for existence of Grand Army 
of the Republic, 515-516. 

Petroleum in California, 52-53. 

Philadelphia, impressions of, 8-9. 

Philanthropic work in America, 397 ff. 

Philanthropists in America and Europe, 
267-269. 

Philippine Islands, a pretext for develop- 
ing the American navy, 499; prog- 
ress under American regime, 500. 

PhiUips Brooks House, Boston, 391-392. 

Photographers, newspaper, 10. 

Pictures by French artists in American 
galleries, 195. 

"Pied Piper," pageant of the, 412-415. 

Pinchot, Gifford, apostle of afforestation, 
89. 

Pious Funds, submission of question to 
Hague tribunal, 308. 

Pittsburgh, pageant given to children 
at, 412-415; production and cir- 
culation shown at, 420; present and 
future greatness of, 421 ; steel manu- 
factures, 422; blast furnaces, 423; 



INDEX 



541 



competitors of, in the manufacture of 
steel, 426-427, 432-433, 443- 

Playground, The, magazine, 410. 

Playground Associations, 409-416. 

Policing the ocean, 3-4. 

Political economy, teaching of, and 
relation to peace organization, 202. 

Political parties, period of unrest in, 
in United States, 344-345. 

Politics, education and, in United States, 
198, 201 ; treatment in Christian 
Science Monitor, 382-383. 

Polygamy, problem of, in Utah, 99-102 ; 
reason for persistence of, 375. 

Poor, the discontented, in America, 347. 

Population of Canada and of United 
States, 448-450. 

Pork barrel legislation, 515-516. 

Porter, Horace, 179, 309. 

Portland, Oregon, visit to, 93-94. 

Prairie, the, viewed as an ocean, 106; 
wheat-growing on, in Canada, 452. 

Presbyterian Church, Seattle, account 
of work, 398-401. 

President of United States, responsibili- 
ties of, 281. 

Press, the American. See Newspapers. 

Printing, American, 250. 

Production in America, 418-420; sup- 
plemented by circulation, 420. 

Progressive Party, the, 345-347. 

Prohibition, women and, 262-264. 

Public opinion, force in United States, 
315 flF. ; the guardian of American 
universities, 326-327; influence on 
religious instruction at colleges, 336. 



Quebec, population of, 449. 
Quiet, children's need of, 409. 

R 

Railroads, to Seattle, 79, 85; panic 
connected with, 189, 191 ; the 
creators of modem America, 188- 
189; lack of terminal facilities, 
189-190, 455 ; centering in Chicago, 
233-234; supplies for, manufactured 
at Pittsburgh, 425-426; rate of 
growth compared with growth of 
traffic, 426 ; supplemented by canals. 



428; transcontinental, in Canada, 
455-456; in Hudson Bay country, 
457-458; Russia's need of, 470, 
471; in Norway, 473. 

Railroad travel, through the Rocky 
Mountains, 103-105; advantages of 
American, 134-136. 

Rainier, Mount, 98. 

Recall, the, 514-515- 

Rectory gardens, 301. 

Reinsch, Paul, 198, 202. 

Religion, the American, 256 ; the church 
a school in America, 336-337; atti- 
tude of Americans toward, 370 flf. ; 
dislike for arguments about, 370; 
reasons for respect for, 370-371 ; 
decrease in attendance at church, 
371 ; early laws for observance of 
Sunday, 371-372; process of evolu- 
tion in, 372-374; Christian Science, 
376-384; spirit of toleration in, 
384-386; Ethical Culture Society, 
385; genius of the French Revolu- 
tion displayed in, 386-388; Edward 
Everett Hale quoted, 387-388; 
viewed by Americans as a source 
of new ideas and given the highest 
possible position, 388; indifference 
to dogma, 388-389; the Unitarians, 
389-390; of the future, 393 fif. ; 
secularization in France, 394-396; 
America the logical place for growth 
of the future, 396-397 ; for liberty, 
justice, and duty, that is growing up 
with childhood, 416-417. 

Religions, Congress of, at Chicago, 374; 
union of, in America, 384-386. 

Religious toleration in American col- 
leges, 335-33^- 

Reporters, American, 10. 

Revolutionary ideas fostered by foreign 
students at American imiversities, 

257- 
Rich, class of discontented, in America, 

347. 

Rio Grande, source of, 103-104. 

Rivers, American, 94; in the Rocky 
Mountains, 103-104 ; individuality 
of, 184. 

Roads, badness of Western, 138. 

Roaldes, M., 21. 

Robertson, Mr., president of Manu- 
facturers' Club, Cincinnati, 265. 



542 



INDEX 



Rochambeau monument, Washington, 
1 8, 305- 

Rock Creek Park, Washington, descrip- 
tion of, 296-297. 

Rocky Mountains, impressions of, 103- 
105. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, attitude toward 
feminism, 67; and the Hague tri- 
bunal, 240, 307-308; author's visit 
to, when President, 306 ; a leader in 
organization of arbitration, 344; 
Panama Canal work during adminis- 
tration of, 504; advocacy of the 
recall by, 514-515; development of 
imperialism under, 520. 

Roosevelt Dam, 98. 

Root, Elihu, 17, 202; type of American 
idealist statesman, 309; on the 
Iroquois' support as the cause of 
the triumph of English over French 
in America, 352 ; on preparations 
for celebrating the centenary of 
peace between United States and 
England, 463; on opening Panama 
Canal to every nation on the same 
terms, 510-51 1; on arbitrating 
Panama Canal tolls question, 513. 

Round Table Club, St. Louis, 180. 

Russia, effect on, of European War, 
230; doctrines spread in America 
by students from, 257 ; American 
ignorance of, 469; resources, and 
position as a future competitor of 
United States, 469-471. 



Sabin, Ellen, principal of Downer Col- 
lege, 210. 

Sacramento River, 94; gold mining on 
banks of, 95-97. 

Sage, Mrs. Russell, work for protection 
of birds, 299. 

St. Antoine Falls, Minneapolis, 185- 
186, 187. 

St. Louis, memories awakened by, 155- 
156; the Mississippi at, 157; his- 
torical recollections, 157-163; the 
creation of, 160; population and 
prosperity, 164; climate, 166; nat- 
ural catastrophes, 166, 168; sou- 
venirs of France, 169-170; parks, 
180; social life, 180. 



St. Louis Exhibition, 170. 

St. Louis University, 182-183. 

St. Paul, trip to, 184-186; women of, 
195; Mr. Hill's art gallery, 195. 

Salt Lake City, visit to, 98-102 ; pros- 
perity of, 101 ; musical activities, 
246. 

Salvation Army, methods of the, 385. 

San Antonio, Texas, 24; a caravanserai 
city, 25; "the cradle of liberty in 
Texas," 29; barber-shop fascinations 
at, 251. 

San Francisco, distances in, 45 ; labor- 
ers' wages in, 45 ; number of Japan- 
ese in, 49; campaign for woman's 
suffrage, 59-72 ; opposition to votes 
for women, 73; recovery after the 
earthquake, 167; musical interests, 
246, 247. 

Sangrain, Antoine, 168. 

Saskatchewan, population of, 449. 

Scandinavian nations, early germination 
of ideas in, 68 ; qualities as competi- 
tors of United States, 473-475. 

Schmidlapp, Mr., Cincinnati manufac- 
turer and public benefactor, 265-269. 

Schools, as community centers, 81-82 ; 
grades of American, 319-320. 

Scientific management in America, 404. 

Scott, James Brown, 17, 179. 

Seattle, favorable attitude in, toward 
Japanese, 48-49; number of Japan- 
ese in, 49; description of visit to, 
75 ff . ; the moving houses, 76-78 ; 
the "Seattle spirit," 78-80; single- 
tax doctrine, 80-81 ; churches, 81 ; 
Exhibition of 1909, 82-83 ; as the 
center of the four comers of the 
globe, 83; ambition and ideals, 
85-86; export trade, 86; symphony 
orchestra at, 88; account of work of 
First Presbyterian Church, 398-401. 

Seine River, effect of, on Parisians, 185. 

Shafroth, John F., governor of Colorado, 
116-117, 119. 

Shaw, Robert Gould, negro regiment of, 
368. 

Siberia, the future of, 470-471. 

Singing by young people in America, 
203. 

Single-tax doctrine, Seattle, 80-81. 

Skyscrapers, demoralizing effect of, 7- 
8; in Chicago, 238. 



INDEX 



543 



Slavery, horrors of, in United States, 
359-361. 

Slocumb, President, 105. 

Smiley brothers, work of, at Lake 
Mohonk, 338-345- 

"Snobisme" of Americans, remarks on, 
244-245. 

SociaHsm, among Germans in Mil- 
waukee, 216; a party of destruction 
and of promises, 347-348; compara- 
tive weakness in United States, 348- 
349 ; obstacles to practical application 
of, 349-351 ; why especially weak in 
United States, 351, 397. 

Social science, relation to peace organiza- 
tion, 202. 

Sons and Daughters of the American 
Revolution, Denver, iii. 

Sorbonne, professors, 169; conditions 
at the, contrasted with those at 
American universities, 334. 

South America, future competition of, 
with United States, 468. 

Spain, interests of, in Mexico, 28; 
efforts of, toward economic revival, 
472. 

Spalding, Bishop, 99. 

Spanish War, possible disaster to United 
States in, 114. 

Stanford University, coeducation at, 55. 

Steel, manufacture of, at Pittsburgh, 
423-424; competitors of Pittsburgh 
in manufacture of, 426-427, 432-433, 

443- 
Stewart, Elihu, superintendent of Cana- 
dian forests, 451-452. 
Stimson, Henry L., report of, as secretary 

of war, cited, 481. 
Stock raising, in California, 46; in 

Washington and Oregon, 90-91. 
Stone, Melville, 402. 
Submarines, changes in naval warfare 

due to, 487. 
Sueter, Murray, quoted on mines and 

torpedoes in naval warfare, 487. 
Suffrage for women, campaign for, in 

California, 59-72. 
Suffragettes in England, 66. 
Sunday Evening Club, Chicago, 244. 
Sunlight, blessings of, in modem city, 

292. 
Symphony orchestras in America, 88, 

246. 



Taft, William H., firmness in Mexican 
situation, 32-33, 483; visit to, when 
President, 306; action on arbitration 
treaties, 309-310; professor at Yale 
University, 335 ; organization of 
arbitration supported by, 344. 

Tariff, protective, evils of in United 
States, 513-515- 

Technical schools in United States, 320, 
321-322. 

Temperance, display of, at Lincoln 
banquet, 143-144. 

Terminal facilities, lack of, in American 
cities, 189-190; lack of, for Canadian 
railroads, 455. 

Texas, attitude toward Mexico, 11 ff . ; 
memories of northern Africa aroused 
by, 23 ; material progress of, 24 ; 
description of country, 23-26; in- 
terest of, in Mexican situation, 29. 

Thompson, Robert M., 269. 

Titanic disaster, 4, 382. 

Tocqueville, Alexis de, on Sunday 
observance in America, 372 ; on 
geographical position of United 
States as a natural protection, 485. 

Toleration, why necessary among re- 
ligions in America, 375. 

Tourist traffic in California, 53. 

Tower, Charlemagne, biography of 
Lafayette by, 9. 

Transportation, problem in United 
States, 188-194; facilities for, in 
France and in America, 424 ff. ; 
relation to peace, 425 ; railroads 
and canals, 427-433; highways, 
434 ; in Canada, 455-457. See also 
Railroads. 

Travelers, disadvantages of unenlight- 
ened, 171-172; English, in Paris, 
172; American, in France, 175-176. 

Traveling scholarships, 17-18. 

Treaties, arbitration, action of President 
Taft regarding, 310. 

Trees, effect on, of skyscrapers, 7 ; in 
Philadelphia, 8; in California, 51; 
about Seattle, 76; in Rock Creek 
Park, Washington, 297-298. 

Trustees of American universities, office 
and responsibilities, 327-328. 

Tuck, Amos, cited, 188. 



544 



INDEX 



Tuck, Edward, benefactions of, 268, 
Tulane University, visit to, 22-23. 
Tuskegee Institute, 320, 364. 

U 

Union Steel Corporation, works of, at 
Duluth, 433. 

Unitarians, accomplishment of purpose 
of, 389-390. 

United States, attitude toward revolu- 
tionary Mexico, II fif. ; dangers to, 
of war with Mexico, 14; problems 
presented by Mexican situation, 
27-40; long distances in, 42-44; 
total number of Japanese in, 49; 
possibilities of war with Japan, 54, 
74, 125-133; students of, traveling 
abroad, 57-59; states which have 
granted votes to women, 72; sup- 
port of Hague institution, 138-139, 
306-309; and the Alsace-Lorraine 
question, 217-218; supremacy of 
children in, 267 ; benefactions of 
successful business men in, 267- 
269; non-central location of capital, 
280; unsuitabiUty of eagle as a 
symbol for, 300; progress in art of 
gardening, 300-301 ; formation of 
natural taste in art, 303 ; question 
of relation of federal capital to the 
nation, 311 ; mission of, to regenerate 
the Old World by giving it the 
program of government, 311-312; 
political parties, 344-347 ; Socialism 
in, 347-351; the Indian question, 
351-357; the negro question, 358- 
370; religion in, 370-376; sources 
of future competition, 467 ff. ; ex- 
penditure for pensions, 479; figures 
as to army, 480-481 ; the militia, 
482 ; the navy, 484-495 ; geo- 
graphical and political position the 
best defense, 485 ; and the Philip- 
pine Islands, 499-500; Panama 
Canal questions, 501-5x3; evils of 
protective tariff, 513-515; pork 
barrel legislation, 515-516; new 
immigration, 517-518; difference 
between governmental weaknesses 
and the aspirations of the country, 
519; idealism of the people con- 
trasted with growing imperialism 



of the government, 519-521; ob- 
ligations and duties to the rest of 
the world, 521. 

Universities, coeducation in Western, 
55 ; models taken by America for 
her, 213; different classes of, 327; 
responsibiUty for, vested in trustees, 
327-328; honor and respect accorded 
men identified with, 328-330; pro- 
tection of youth at, 333-334; con- 
ditions at, compared with those at 
the Sorbonne, 334 ; political freedom 
of heads of, 337-338. 

University, parHament and, contrasted, 
201 ; absence of a national, at 
Washington, 213, 281 ; question as 
to harm or ill to be done by a Federal, 
318. 

Urbana, Illinois, visit to state university 
at, 254 ff. ; the Cosmopolitan Club, 
and thoughts suggested by visit to, 
256-262; prohibition in, 262-264. 

Usefulness, an ideal in America, 317. 

Utah, woman suffrage in, 72 ; irrigation 
in, 98-99; polygamy in, 100-102, 
375- 



Van Dyke, Henry, 169. 

Van Home, Sir William, on the negro 
problem, 365 ; on the function of 
railroads in Canada, 455-456. 

Vassar College, impressions of, 331- 
332 ; religious toleration at, 336. 

Violence, a temptation to be shunned, 

524-525. 
"Votes for women," campaign for, in 
California, 59-72; arguments for, 
found in behavior of women in Euro- 
pean War, 66 n. 

W 

Wages, high rate of, in California, 44- 
45 ; in Chicago and in Kansas City, 
148; of engine drivers, 193. 

Walking, old and new views of, 292-293. 

Walling, Anna, quoted, 257. 

Wang, C. C, president of International 
Club, University of Wisconsin, 207 ; 
article in Cosmopolitan Student by, 
258. 

War of 1914-15. See European War. 



INDEX 



545 



Washington, Booker T., work at Tuske- 
gee Institute, 364-365 ; disciples of, 
as teachers among negroes, 367. 

Washington, George, tomb of, at Mount 
Vernon, 305; Farewell Address 
quoted concerning natural defenses 
of United States, 485. 

Washington, D. C, Pan-American Bu- 
reau at, 14-17; distances in, 43; 
danger to, from non-central location 
in nation, 280; the political but not 
the intellectual center of the United 
States, 280-281 ; government of, 
281 ; description of residential quar- 
ter, 282-283 ; children, babies, and 
women, 283-285 ; plan of, and 
L'Enfant's work, 285-291 ; a trium- 
phant example of city-planning, 
291 S. ; Rock Creek Park, 296-297 ; 
trees and birds in park, 297-300; 
gardens and gardening, 300-303, 
304; Mount Vernon and the White 
House, 304-305 ; viewed as a city 
of gratitude, 305-306 ; to be a small 
court or a great capital? 311-312. 

Washington, state of, number of Jap- 
anese in, 49; woman suffrage in, 
72 ; visit to, 75 ff. ; agricultural 
methods in, 90; livestock raising, 
90-91 ; culture and gathering of 
apples, 91-92. 

Wastefulness of Americans, 89-90. 

Water, influence on human education, 

197. 
Water traffic in United States, 1 91-194, 

427-433- 

Weather Bureau, Washington, 290. 

Weill, Raphael, 44. 

Wellesley College, 331. 

Wendell, Barrett, 169. 

West Point Academy, 320. 

Wheat-harvesting methods in the West, 
90. 

Wheat raising in Canada, 452-454. 

Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, 55, 113-114; 
political freedom of educators illus- 
trated by, 337. 

White, Andrew D., 178, 307; university 
distinction of, 329. 

White House, Washington, significance 
to Americans, 305; author's visits 



to, 306 ; a battle ground of opposing 
forces, 310-31 1. 

Widtsoe, John A., books on dry farming 
by, 99- 

Wilson, George Grafton, 169. 

Wilson, President, poUcy toward Mexico, 
36, 38-39; university connections, 
330. 

Wine, California, 51-52. 

Wisconsin, constitution and legislative 
department, 198-201. 

Wisconsin, University of, 196, 197-198, 
201, 202-204, 207-208. 

Woman, the American, 54, 55 ff., iii- 
112; influence regarding the drink 
question, 262-264; specimens of, 
seen in Washington, 284-285. 

Woman suffrage, 59 ff. ; states where 
granted, 72. 

Women, at Western universities, 55-57 ; 
young American, traveling abroad, 
59; status of French, 62-66; mem- 
bers of Colorado legislature, 122- 
123; disadvantages of, at banquets, 
152-153; of St. Paul and Minne- 
apolis, 195 ; associations of, for city 
beautifying, 295-296; feelings of 
American, concerning secularization 
in France, 394-395- 

"Women and the Cause of Peace," 
lecture on, 60. 

"Women's Journal amd Suffrage News," 
73 n. 

Wood, Leonard, work for negroes in 
Cuba, 366, 467 ; chief of general 
staff, 484; peaceful conquest of 
Cuba by, 498. 

Wright brothers, 270; early flights in 
France, 273-274. 

Wyoming, woman suffrage in, 72. 



Yale University, initiative and kindliness 

of students at, 334-335- 
Yellow fever germ, war waged on, by 

Americans, 505. 
Yellow peril, the, 47-50. 54, 125-133, 

508 n. 
Yellowstone Park, 211. 
Young Americans abroad, 57-59. 



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